Messrs. Roberts Brothers^ Publications. 



A NILE JOURNAL. By Thomas G. Appleton. 
Square i2mo. Cloth. Price $2.25. 

" The account furnished by Mr. Appleton of his winter on the Nile wiU proba- 
bly be pleasant reading to those who have already passed through the same 
scenes. It gives a vivid photograph of that wonderful East, for whose shores we 
all have a reverent longing. The journal, kept by a man of varied experiences, 
and large and many-sided intelligence and knowledge, cultivated by travel and 
study, is a far better way of conveying even to the casual reader a real picture of 
what is most striking and characteristic than a mere dry recital of facts and figures, 
such as can be pieced out of guide-book and professed h!Stories._ It is by his skill 
in selection that Mr. Appleton has made a book that is especially rich in local 
color. Instead of giving a learned catalogue of the most striking remains, he 
furnishes a well-digested reference table of the books best worth reading. There 
is little of statistics, less of the frequent discussion of the questions of Eastern 
politics, nothing at all of Egyptian industry, but there is a glowing word painting 
of the scenes daily opened to a watchful traveller ; and, when prose fails, poetry 
serves to fill in the needful touches that make the picture perfect." — Philadelphia 
Ledger. 

" We cannot follow this genial author any further. While we don't find any 
thing very heroic or daring m going down a well-known river in a canoe, we find 
a great deal that is of surpassing interest. He sees with the eye of an artist, and 
therefore always seizes upon the most salient points. He never tires us; and, 
when we have read on to the end of his book, we wish there were more, or that 
another book in the same vein would soon make its appearance." — San Fran- 
cisco Evening Bulletin. 

A SHEAF OF PAPERS. By. T. G. A. Square 
i2mo. Cloth. Gilt top. Price $1.50. 

" These initials will be readily reco^ized as those of one of our best-known 
Boston wits, many of whose quaint sayings have already become proverbial. . . . 
In them [the papers], every reader will recognize a strong basis of common sense, 
a lively fancy, and a keen wit. The book is one to take up in any idle hour, and to 
put in one's pocket for a travelling _ companion ; and one cannot help wishing 
that the writer had also included in it some of the poems which were privately 
printed several months ago." — Boston Transcript. 

" A very pleasant and thoughtful book, which we who are not of Boston do not 
like any less, but rather more, because it has an eminently Bostonish flavor ; and 
it affects us somewhat as ' a fine last century face.' These papers could not have 
been written from any other motive than the joy of writing them. They have an 
air of quiet about them that is wonderfully refreshing. Their talk of ' Art and 
Artists^ is particularly pleasant." — Christian Register. 

I' He is one of the few Americans who have written too little, Mr. Emerson 
being the most conspicuous of that small band. A man of native wit, and now of 
world-wide experience, too little of which, perhaps, is practical, he cannot write 
otherwise than pleasantly, and often with_ a profound wisdom which takes on a 
superficial air only from the gayety of his style. He can vmte as lightly as a 
Frenchman, as seriously as a German, and yet with all his culture and his foreign 
anecdotes is simply an American, — even a Bostonian, — tnalgri luL" — Spring- 
field Republican. 

Sold by all booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, by the 
Publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. Boston. 



CHEQUER-WORK. 



Chequer-Work. 



BY 

THOMAS G. APPLETON, 

AUTHOR OF "a SHEAF OF PAPERS," "a NILE JOURNAL,'? " SYRIAN 
SUNSHINE," " WINDFALLS." 




■Jn !3^ 



BOSTON: 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. 

1879. 






Copyright, 1879, 
By Roberts Brothers. 



university press: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



TO H. W. LONGFELLOW. 

Dear Henry: — 

Allow me, a laborer of the eleventh hour, to dedicate to 
you, who have cultivated for so long and with such honor the 
field of letters, these improvisations, in token of our life-long 
intimacy, sympathetic and without a cloud. 



I. 



THE ARTIST OF TANAGRA. 

KoAa yepeia eiaofiLeva 

Ta.vaypLSe<T(Ti AeuKorreVAots. 
/ie'ya 5" iixri y^yaOe ttoAis 
Aiyovpo/cwTt'Aijs evonij^. 

COEINKA OP TAIfAGBA. 



CHEQUEE-WORK. 



I. 

THE ARTIST OF TANAGRA. 




'' I ^WO things there are in the world which keep 
-^ it for ever fresh and young, — love and the 
spring-time ; and when they come together, as 
they like to do, the old wrinkled planet looks new 
again. Its brooklets leap, its birds sing, its sun- 
shine smiles, as if only youth counted for any 
thing. 

All heroes and all heroines are young. When 
we are strong and happy, youth comes back to us 
as if with wings. Every day has a life of its own, 
and it dies at midni^it. Every human creature 
lives but a day, and sleep tolls for him its pass- 



4 CREQUER-WORK. 

ing bell. We are ephemeridce, and there is noth- 
ing old, really, but the scene of our existence. 
Therefore it is as easy to imagine that morning 
in Boeotia, more than four hundred years before 
the Saviour came to give to all things a look 
unseen before, as it is to imagine a Boeotian 
morning of to-day. 

Spring-time in Greece is lovely : while it is far 
enough to the north to give us a sense of delight 
in the mellowing days, it is southward enough to 
keep from man's nerves those shocks of discord 
which the recurrence of chill and frost bring to 
us in New England. There is a sense of security 
in its possession ; the enamelled scarf of Flora 
is not twitched from before our eyes, nor her 
lovely locks loaded with snow. Thus the move- 
ment of water, the invitation of the flowers, drew 
the Boeotians from their little town of Tanagra 
to the fields and hillsides in that spring so long 
ago. 

The feeling for nature, if not the means of its 
expression, was already implanted in man, though 
in a far simpler and less complex fashion than 
with us. And so the good Boeotians walked smil- 
ing past the budding groves where they thought 
a slim nymph might hide behind the willow- 



THE ARTIST OF TANAGRA. 5 

trunks, and along the sweet-smelling fields, which 
Demeter was sowing with little peaceful sword- 
blades, — and felt their happiness without analyz- 
ing it, 

Boeotia then was a pastoral country, and a pas- 
toral and agricultural life has something of the 
sweet steadfastness of growing things, the tranquil- 
lity and fixedness of hills and groves. Athens 
was on fire with mental activity; men ripened in 
its dEizzling sunshine as the wheat on the sunny 
banks of the Asopus. Rumors of the great 
men's thoughts and actions, the echo of which 
reaches to our day, came to them from time to 
time. The richest citizens, visiting Athens, had 
climbed by the new steps of the Propylsea to 
where they found Phidias surrounded by groups 
of men, to whom, with an unrolled scroll upon his 
knees, he was explaining with what simplicity, 
with what harmonious unity, should be constructed 
the home he was preparing for that pure and 
difficult goddess who loved Athens better than all 
the world beside. Some told of a majestic man 
whose scarlet tunic edged with gold gave him a 
look of authority, to whom all turned their faces 
as he spoke ; and they had seen sometimes at his 
side, with a yearning, unsatisfied expression cloud- 



6 CHEQTJEE-WORK. 

ing her faultless features, a stately creature who 
might have passed with the vulgar for Athen6 
herself, come to mingle counsel with encourage- 
ment to all the great men toiling in her service. 
And the news of the majestic forms, divine and 
human, which Phidias and his school had set 
up filled with a noble enYj the men and women 
of Boeotia, who, though iih ought dull by the 
sprightlier brains of Athens, still had that love 
of the beautiful, tliat worship of the omnipresent 
KaXov without which they held the world to be 
but a brute mass of meaningless matter. 

Everywhere then in G-reece the nerves of men 
thrilled, and thrilled only, to the Good and Excel- 
lent. The vigorous physique given by winds which 
blew from Thrace was not melted into indolence, 
but softened into sensibility by the breezes which 
wooed it from the ^gean. The mask of cre- 
ation smiled to them with the serenity of a God. 
Its expression was not convulsed and distorted by 
the thought of sin as we understand it. ^schy- 
lus and Sophocles show us the struggle in man's 
heart towards an ideal higher than the naive 
cosmogony of Hesiod could furnish ; the tragedy 
of human life they noticed with shuddering hor- 
ror, and attributed to no God who could wear for 



THE ARTIST OE TANAGRA. 7 

his raiment beauty and grace, but to an implac- 
able Fate, the foe to symmetric living, that mys- 
tery of discord in a world which their conscience 
told them should be wholly lovely, and not, as 
would the Christian's conscience, wholly sinless. 

Tanagra was not thirty miles from Athens, but 
the world was not then mad with locomotion, 
and thus, near as it was to the eye of Greece, the 
brain of Europe, it could create and keep a life 
of its own, with habits and customs which sepa- 
rated it from its neighbors. How hard it is to 
understand, here and now, in America, where the 
railroad, steamer, and telegraph have melted a 
whole continent into a tedious unity of customs 
and manners, that in that little space between the 
bounding seas, states like Sparta, Boeotia, Lace- 
daemon, and Athens, could retain their separate 
life, their separate genius, and a patriotic ardor 
which brought into conflict too often, alas ! these 
little groups of men and cities. It is as if we 
were looking at nations through a microscope, to 
see such mighty passions, such mighty efforts, in 
a space which the map shows to us as so insignif- 
icant. It reminds one of the contest between 
rival ant-hills. What heroic efforts, what terrible 
onslaughts between these creatures scarcely vis- 



8 CUEQUER-WORK. 

ible to mail ! And yet is it their smallness which 
makes us such supercilious observers ? The ants 
and many a kindred race of insects seem on 
fire witli genius. Their stratagems, their man- 
oeuvres, we can admire without understanding 
them. How superior seems their endowment to the 
l)ulkier creatures of the fields and woods ! ' The 
larger the animal, the stupider, would seem to be 
the rule. Had whales or elephants the genius of 
ants, the world would be convulsed with their 
struggles. So in that little microcosm of Hellas, 
we must study, as with a lens, the niceties of 
tribal life." The world now is in a position some- 
what to do this ; we know so many links of the 
chain, we can almost infer the nature of those 
that are lost. We have but to erase from that 
overwritten palimpsest the surface record, to find, 
hidden below, what will make intelligible that 
Eastern march of emigration, what it brought 
and what it left, when, as at Byzantium and 
Sardis, each etape was marked by a city. All 
Asia Minor must be uncovered. 

The Greeks, like all great races, were mingled 
of many strands. Each fetched its blood, its 
habit, its faith, into the peninsula. As a cara- 
van of children might bring its stock of toys into 



THE ARTIST OF TANAGRA. 9 

a common nursery, so these various and mingling 
tribes brought their many gods into a common 
enclosure. We cannot understand Tooke's Pan- 
theon, with its formidable accumulation of gods 
and goddesses, their many names, their many 
adventures, their many aliases, if we suppose all 
this emanated from one Greek brain, or one 
Greek faith. They made a common nursery of 
all their little dolls ; and as children, by mak- 
ing believe very much, get a faith in theirs, so 
these , childlike ancients found a home in their 
superstition for all these gods. It was by an 
extension of the imaginative faculty, not by a 
purification of conscience, that they reached their 
heaven. And is it not plain that if they bowed 
with smiling courtesy to Zeus, Her^, and the 
rest, their minds could not at the same time be 
travailing for a spiritual condition, and hold that 
trust which was not faith, in the gods which each 
tribe derived from its fathers. 

In fact, theirs was not so much a religion at all, 
as a pretty substitute for one. It fitted into this 
world, embellished, ennobled it. But its " rever- 
sion in the skies " was of the feeblest. How beau- 
tiful is the attitude of the Greek towards death. 
The sculpture of many tombs near Athens, lately 



10 CHEQUEE-WOEK. 

discovered, shows this. The dignity of manhood 
is preserved. "Farewell, dear one," is what each 
bereaved survivor says to his escaping friend. 
There is nothing of that debasing terror which 
makes many a modern human soul a cavern of 
darkness, where echoes only the jeer of some cruel 
fiend ; but, looking at them, we are reminded of 
the story of the sailor, who by the laws of the 
service was condemned to death for striking his 
captain, who had wronged him. The judge, with 
his black cap on, said, " Prisoner, the law has 
condemned you. It remains to secure God's for- 
giveness, if not, you will be punished for ever and 
ever." To which the unquailing sailor replied 
cheerfully, " And if I am, my lord, I hope I shall 
be able to bear it." Yet that is just what the 
old-fashioned Christian did not want to hear his 
brother man say of himself. 

We have said that the good people of Tanagra 
were enjoying the sunshine of the early spring a 
many years ago. The groups were not wholly 
masculine as they would have been farther East ; 
but women and children mingled in the throng. 
The dress of these latter was of that simple sort 
with which Greek sculpture has made us familiar ; 
of fine and costly tissues there were not many, — 



THE ARTIST OP TANAGRA. 11 

the luxuries of Phoenicia did not greatly abound in 
the rural districts of Hellas, — but here and there, 
upon swan-like necks and snowy wrists, sparkled 
a jewel, or some Egyptian emblem, an intaglio 
from Nineveh, or a reproduction of its style, 
hinting at a relation with the far East, which the 
current legends of the place scarcely explained. 
From little shell-like ears, rings of gold depended. 
Much attention seemed paid to the hair. It was 
carefully, even coquettishly, dressed, in many 
ways, — sometimes the chestnut locks, closely 
packed, were divided as with furrows ; often the 
hair was simply gathered in a knot behind, or 
worn upon the top of the head; at times it 
was half-hidden by a wreath of roses, or wholly 
so by a hood or a light cap resembling that of 
Phrygia. The dress consisted of light materials 
of wool and linen, — a scarf was wound about 
the waist, or a shawl-like breadth of drapery, in 
the folds of which the arms, from the elbow to 
the wrist, rested comfortably ; unless they were 
carried behind their backs, giving a twist to the 
peplum which brought out in horizontal folds the 
curves of their graceful figures. This drapery 
round the shoulders was varied with skilful co- 
quetry, and its horizontal lines gave great value 



12 CHEQUER-WORK. 

to the straight folds of the long skirts which fell 
to their feet. The feet were often covered with 
clumsy shoes fit for country walking, but at times 
one could see something like a slipper with its 
sole of lively red. As a nun will move with 
a chastened meekness which expresses itself in 
her abashed face and deprecating action, these 
free children of Hellas, whose religion was devo- 
tion to the principle of beauty, moved with an 
unconscious charm which penetrated from within 
through every gesture. 

The women of Tanagra were famous for their 
good looks. They knew this well themselves, 
and the confidence thus inspired added a saucy 
charm which was felt by most visitors. The life 
led there was what the French commonly call 
une vie plantureuse. The Boeotians held heavy 
feasts, believing in creature comforts, and were 
the only Greeks who habitually ate meat. Their 
houses were larger than those of their neighbors, 
and every thing indicated that they had the best 
of grounds for adoring their good Demeter who 
enriched their fields from her overflowing horn of 
plenty. 

There had been a fete to this goddess the day 
before, and many young girls had left the gar- 



THE AETIST OF TANAGRA. 13 

lands they had worn, still in their hair ; and the 
young men, in the tidiness and care of their cos- 
tume, showed that they also had been participa- 
tors. Some carried the double flute, with the 
mouth-piece, the use of which can yet be found 
on Arcadian hill-sides. Some groups, led by a 
flute, would sing in chorus as they walked with 
interlacing arms, and as here and there, a word 
fell upon the ear, in praise of the goddess and the 
bounty of the year, it seemed to all an invocation 
suited to the happy spring-time, a prelude to those 
breadths of golden grain which would enrich the 
plain below. 

A man from Athens could have understood, the 
conversation which buzzed around him, but he 
would have noticed a patois which made this 
Greek speech awkward and unfamiliar. He 
would have noticed with amusement the inter- 
est betrayed in pursuits so foreign to his own, 
that self-esteem,, that confidence in their own 
gods and heroes, which was so marked a fea- 
ture of Grecian egotism, that- it survives to 
the present day, and whose natural language of 
vanity astonishes the stranger, if he happen now 
to arrive on some fete-day, when the modern 
Greek, like a golden pheasant, is strutting in all 



14 CHEQUER-WORK. 

the splendor of his Sunday garb. The Athenian 
would have peeped under the broad-brimmed hats 
of the women, suspended almost like parasols 
above their heads, or looked inquiringly into 
the honest unshaven faces of the men, crowned 
almost every one with the broad cap, a button on 
top, such as is ftow worn as a survival, one sup- 
poses, in the Pyrenees, there called a berSt, 
among the Basques, and reaching its farthest 
flight northward as the Glengarry cap. Ancient 
coins show us that such a cap was worn in 
^tolia, and very likely throughout Greece, by 
shepherds and farmers. The hard work of the 
fields must be done under a sun whose rays de- 
mand such shelter as the men and women of 
Tanagra had, and the girls, like modern Spanish 
ladies, manoeuvred a heart-shaped fan, probably 
of palm-leaf, with a coquetry which grows no 
weaker as the world grows older. If we, like the 
supposed Athenian, could have l^ooked upon these 
joyous groups, we should have been struck through 
with a feeling of sympathy, a discovery of the 
brotherhood with perished races for which dull 
historical books had hardly prepared us. 

We say the supposed Athenian, and such an 
Athenian really was there. He had come on 



THE AETIST OF TANAGEA. 15 

some matter which was a secret as yet between 
himself and the priests of the temple of Delium 
on the seashore five miles beyond Tanagra. It 
was whispered that perhaps his errand was from 
the great Pericles to the chief priest, concerning 
a promised statue, by one of the Athenian sculp- 
tors, of the god Apollo, to whom the temple of 
Delium was dedicated. Whatever his errand 
was, he had fulfilled it, and was now wandering, 
free from care, among these good country-folks, 
and drawing into his broad chest that perfume of 
the fields which the dusty and crowded Athens 
could not furnish. As he moved, nature seemed 
to do him homage. It seemed as if they both 
understood each other, that they both tried to 
live a common life, — the one faithful to the law 
of increase and decrease, of usefulness steeped in 
beauty, of a power beneficent yet imposing, which 
hovered, a mystery to man, in woods and waters ; 
and the other a servant to that power, following 
in the , footsteps of his mistress, with beauty for 
his guide and instructor. 

As the Athenian paused to consider the har- 
mony of the lines where the hills and plain 
mingled with the horizon, glancing from time to 
time at the gesticulating and buzzing groups as 



16 CHEQUER-WORK. 

the J sauntered to and fro, his eye was rivetted, 
he knew not why," upon the face of one who had 
escaped from the crowd, and was moving in ap- 
parent dejection down towards the banks of the 
Asopus. It was the beautiful face of a young 
man clouded with discouragement, a face which 
interested him exceedingly, and which he felt that 
he had seen before. Was it, thought he to him- 
self, in some previous condition of existence, — 
all life being, as some think, but a recurrence in 
endless revolution, — or was it some face which 
he had seen before on earth with the same interest 
as now, though when or where he could not re- 
member. As he sought the solution, his spirit 
seemed to escape from him, wafted in search, and 
he stood still and immovable, while the hum of 
the swarming throngs faded into silence, and the 
landscape swam before his unseeing eyes ; a day- 
dream from which he recovered with a start, and 
smiling to himself, wrapped in his chlamys, slowly 
retired. 

The young man who descended the hill did not 
move at random. Lovers have a secret intelli- 
gence of each other's movements like the divina- 
tion of birds ; but now divination was not needed, 
for Eucharis had seen a fair girl leave the throng, 



THE ABTIST OP TANAGRA. 17 

going toward the river bank. A delicious unrest, 
a longing for solitude, a hatred of the unsympa- 
thetic crowd, not to speak of the sweet influences 
of the spring, had led her footsteps thither. Her 
mantle was drawn closely around her, and her 
little Phrygian cap restrained her abundant locks, 
as she slowly swung a wreath which she had 
taken from the head of one of the companions of 
her promenade. Bucharis was not long in find- 
ing her, seated on the river's bank, having thrown 
aside her peplum and fan, scattering the leaves 
of her garland into the stream, watching these 
little boats as they danced in the sunshine, en- 
countered each other with a shock like triremes, 
then submerged, coloring the wave as they sank, 
or with better fortune sailing proudly out of sight. 
Bucharis sat silent for a while by her side, watch- 
ing the rosy galleys as she did, till at length, 
taking care to select a stout and curving rose- 
leaf, he said, " There, dear one ; I entrust to 
Flora and the spring the bark which shall carry 
to a happy haven our love." 

Well pleased, she replied, " I accept the omen, 
and I offer to Demeter this votive garland ; I 
pray that she will make your omen of happy 
augury, and grant that amid the treasure of her 



18 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

fields she will bring to bloom and fruition the 
blossom of our love to which the winter we have 
passed has been so adverse." 

" It is well," said Eucharis, " to do this, for 
everj thing is an omen to those who know 
how to read the will of the gods. Nor have I 
been unthoughtful of them till now. Have I not, 
in Delium's temple, bent in entreaty to Phoebus- 
Apollo, and sought from him the strength to 
encounter repulse, and the encouragement which 
the mighty god loves to bestow on his votaries ? 
Have I not urged him to turn aside, in your 
father's heart, the scorn and indifference with 
which he regards me ? Have I not besought him 
to guide my genius and make it worthy at last to 
fashion the images of the gods themselves, while, 
content with my more modest art, I only recreate 
in little the townsfolk, keeping their look, their 
gesture, their attire, as best I can. Have you 
heard that Colophon the wealthy grazier ordered 
before he died that my little figures of his rela- 
tives and friends should be buried with him in 
his tomb ? He said they were the images of 
those he had loved on earth, and that he wished 
to keep them by him as company in the solitude 
of the grave. Your father disdains my work, and 



THE ARTIST OF TANAGRA. 19 

reproaches me with its triviality. Had I the 
marble of Pentelicus, perhaps I might, as they do 
at Athens, shape it into beauty and grandeur. 
But I consider myself fortunate in discovering 
that bed of fine clay, which allows me to copy 
from the life our good Boeotians. Who knows, 
but when bronze shall have melted in the furnace, 
and marble be shattered to dust, my little figures 
may not carry to distant ages an idea of the happy 
lives we lead here to-day ! For the chance of this 
I have with care just finished figures of you and 
myself, with the hope that, if good fortune do not 
allow our lives here to be blended, we may still 
live in this representation appealing to the sym- 
pathy of lovers through all time. In my own 
figure I have been unable to conceal the despond- 
ency I feel. My eyes dare not contemplate the 
life-giving heavens, but peruse in sorrow the 
earth. My long chlamys almost hides my figure, 
that cloak in which I have so often worked, twist- 
ing the tenacious earth till my fingers ached, and 
smoothing with my wooden tool the delicate curves 
of cheek and neck, while trembling with emotion. 
And to you I have sought to give that air of 
sprightly sauciness, that irrepressible gayety which 
is such a delight, as you know, to my more serious 



20 CHEQUER-WORK. 

temperament. Your confidence, your alertness, 
are as a spur to my uncertain plans. Through 
your whole figure, as smiling as mine is despond- 
ent, there breathes that serenity and cheer which 
I hope to make the complement of my life, and 
without which, ambition seems empty of hope, 
and the future colorless." 

" Yes, dear Eucharis, I accept no omen but a 
happy one. I know that my father will relent. 
Your genius will do this, and the gods shall favor 
us. Why are beauty and genius given to man, 
if he stumble and fail ? If you dare to distrust 
the heavenly influences, I do not. I feel even 
now that the sky is clearing about us ; and that 
the spring will bring with the music of the birds 
and the blooming of the flowers, an unfolding 
to completeness of love's bud which we have 
hidden, through storm and trouble, so closely in 
our hearts. See ! the galley of rose-leaf, to 
which we have entrusted our hopes ! watch it, 
and mark how, avoiding all collision with others, 
the treacherous dimple of the banks, the braided 
and headlong ripple beyond the osiers, it has 
sailed uninjured on, and now swims there far 
down to a peaceful anchorage in that belt of 
joyous sunshine which rules across the wave as 
with a bar of gold ! 



THE AETIST OF TANAGRA. 21 

" Come, let us no longer despair, but return, 
for there may be something preparing for us, to 
make good the augury to which we have en- 
trusted our love." 

As they went, all happy influences streamed 
around them. Apollo went before mantling them 
with the showers of his golden arrows. Flora 
sowed the carpet at their feet with a lace of 
flowers, tossing and bending as they walked. A 
zephyr blew across the ripples of her chestnut 
hair, and into the hollow of her ear of ivory, 
little puffs, little whispers, of affectionate en- 
couragement. The spirit of the hour shot 
through them both, doubling the vivacity of their 
pulses, and making elastic with promise the long- 
ing of their breasts. 

Soon it was that they found themselves upon 
the terrace, so lately alive with fluttering robes 
and the sound of voices, but now empty and 
vacant in the keen sunshine. Only in the 
shadow of a distant street could be seen a stately 
figure moving onward. It was the hour usual for 
their repast with the men of Tanagra, that repast 
so succulent, so abundant, that the rumor of its 
gourmandise has reached even to our day. 

Eucharis, as would a modern lover, escorted 



22 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

his beloved to the house of her father, and then 
withdrew to his own home to fetch the portrait 
figures of them both, of which he had already 
spoken as something which might mitigate the 
indifference of that father whom he feared. 

The houses of Tanagra were generally built 
of wood. They were very often two stories high, 
or even higher, each story supported by solid 
beams. It is probable that this wood was often 
carved and ornamented. The people whose ori- 
ginal statue of Pallas Athene was certainly 
of wood, and was thought to have fallen from 
Heaven, could not have made this, their only 
specimen of wood-carving. In those early days, 
as in all new countries, wood abounded, and the 
plane-tree, the olive, and the oak, and on the 
loftier wooded summits the tribe of abies were 
not infrequent. Bricks the Greeks did not use, 
or we should find, as at Eome and in Egypt, 
those shapeless mounds which fortunately do not 
deface the lovely lines of- Grecian landscape. If 
bricks, however, had been at all used in Greece, 
it would seem the most natural that they should 
be found at Tanagra, where a serviceable clay was 
already turned to profit by our friend Eucharis. 

But of whatever material, the houses of Tan- 



THE ARTIST OF TANAGRA. 23 

agra were of generous size, and the hospitality 
there was counted upon by visitors as a thing 
made sure of. Therefore the mysterious stranger, 
whom we left, lost in a day-dream, after his intelli- 
gent scrutiny of the landscape and the Boeotian 
belles, when he drew up before the front of one 
of the most spacious houses of the place, wore 
that expression of content with all things which 
often betrays the probability of a generous meal. 
He did not stop long to consider the exquisite 
carving upon a beam of cedar of vine-tendrils, 
with their leaves and bunches, nor one or two 
defaced heads of Ohimasras and men let into the 
wall, evidently valued for tlieir age, and looked 
at with the same superstitious reverence with 
which we moderns behold all trophies of the 
past. But after making his presence known, he 
was shown by a slave across a spacious court, 
supported by cedar-beams, into a room on the 
farthest side of the house, aloof from the noise 
and dust of the street, and which was pleasant 
to its owner, as it overlooked, a little, one of the 
many farms of the landed proprietor Crasippus, 
who in the deme in which he lived, was counted 
one of its richest citizens. 

When in the presence of the proprietor, the 



24 CHEQUER-WORK. 

stranger drew from his breast a tablet upon 
which were written certain words which produced 
a great effect upon the farmer and his assembled 
family. Europe had in those early days asserted 
itself in contradistinction to Asia by its more 
modern treatment of women and the family. 
They were not hidden in seraglios nor wholly 
immured in the g-yncecia, though one of the 
wisest of the Greeks said a good woman should 
be little seen and never talked of. And though 
the emancipated hetirce fascinated by a conver- 
sational skill denied to more virtuous matrons, 
still, especially in the cojantry, were found a 
social intercourse and freedom in domestic re- 
lations which made the family much what it is 
in Christendom to-day. 

Therefore the ladies beamed upon the stranger 
and in the face of the younger there was a wist- 
ful expression, as if something she knew of him 
agitated the current of her thoughts. There was 
an appeal in her beautiful blue eyes as if she 
guessed that somehow he was the master of her 
destiny, 

Crasippus was exuberant. He expanded with 
all the complacency of a happy host who receives 
a distinguished guest. He insisted on pouring a 



THE ARTIST OF TANAGRA. 25 

libation before one of the little bronze household 
gods, securing thus the good-will of the tutelary 
genius. At the same time, Myrta placed upon 
the crisp, short locks of the handsome stranger 
a wreath of roses, smiling to think of the happy 
omen the rose-leaf galley of the morning had 
brought to her. 

The repast after that went on triumphantly ; 
the guest, whose appetite fatigue and the country 
air made keen, had no need to affect to do jus- 
tice to the bountiful dinner. His host saw with 
eyes which glistened with pleasure that his sub- 
stantial comforts were understood and enjoyed, 
and pouring full beakers all round out of a grace- 
ful flask, from which, with a dexterous turn of the 
wrist, he expelled the seaHng turpentine, he ex- 
claimed, — 

" Here's to the artist's friend and guardian of 
the great city ; Honor and Homage to the divine 
Pallas Athen^. I hope you like our small wine 
of Tanagra, which, though heady, is justly cele- 
brated; but this flask comes from farther south, 
where Apollo shoots through with sweetness the 
vineyards of Samos, I have in my cellar other 
vintages and other wine, but none which I con- 
sider better than this." 



26 CHEQUER-WORK. 

Bending, after a trial, with due appreciation, 
the stranger said, — 

"It is perfect, and the goddess should be well 
pleased to be remembered in such a wine as this." 

Suddenly Myrta rose and disappeared. Pres- 
ently she returned, leading an abashed youth who 
held somewhat awkwardly, with his left hand, 
his Boeotian cap before him, while in the hollow 
of the other arm was carried a parcel folded in a 
linen cloth. As he saw him, the stranger started, 
and exclaimed, " I know it now, — by Her^ ! and 
I will tell you where I have seen your'^ace before. 
It was at our great festival of tlie Olympian 
games, when, after the dust and glorious fury of 
the chariot races, I saw you .tossing the discus 
with such grace and vigor, that I thought to 
myself such a youth with such action, in marble, 
would be a statue I am sure the Greeks could not 
despise. And therefore this morning, when I 
watched you so sadly descending to your little 
river, I half remembered you ; I knew the face, 
but could not recall where, or when, I had seen 
it before." 

As he spoke, a lightning glance was exchanged 
between Eucharis and Myrta ; and Myrta's face 
was flushed with blushes, as she thought how 



THE ABTIST OF TANAGRA. 27 

possibly the stranger might have discovered her 
also, and guessed the motive of her lover's visit 
to the river. To hide his confusion she said with 
impatience, " Why do you delay to show to my 
father and our guest, who I am sure will be 
merciful in his judgment, the little figures of 
yourself and me, which you have just taken from 
the oven ? " 

As she said this, Eucharis disclosed from its 
covering and placed upon the table two little 
statuettes in terra-cotta, — a kind of work with 
which the stranger seemed wholly unacquainted. 
"By Zeus ! " he said, " and have you artists in 
Bceotia? Calamis I have heard of, and indeed 
seen beautiful things by him ; and is this his 
work ? " 

With a loud laugh, the broad-breasted farmer 
interrupted his guest, crying, — 

" By no sculptor, by no artist are they made, 
but by this shamefaced boy, who makes these 
foolish effigies in earth, which tickle the vanity 
and bad taste of our poor country-folks, so that 
they not only stuff their houses with them, but, in 
disrespect to the gods, carry them with them in 
their fondness, sometimes, to the tomb. We have 
heard that you Athenians call us men of Bceotia 



28 CHEQUEE-WORK. 

dull ; and I suppose this folly of ours is one more 
proof of the justice of your opinion. But let me 
show you others that the young rogue has made ; 
for my daughter persuades me to buy them, and, 
indeed, I think myself they are pleasant to look 
upon : Myrta, fetch them." 

To which, with palpable alacrity, the fair girl 
assented. 

" But why," continued the farmer, " does not 
this young man do like the great men in Athens, 
— neglect such poor subjects for his toil as plain 
citizens, their wives and daughters, fashioned 
from the dust of the earth, and endeavor in the 
nobler material, marble, to give us the awful 
forms of the most high gods, such as they are 
when assembled on Olympus, and not such 
perishable trifles I " 

To whichj after pausing to regard for a moment 
with affectionate interest the downcast face of 
the young man, the stranger replied. There was 
a tenderness in his voice, a sympathy in his gaze, 
for which all were wholly unprepared ; the heart 
of Eucharis leaped tumultuously as the words of 
praise fell upon his ear, while there hovered above 
the white brow of Myrta a lambent flame of 
happy enthusiasm and increasing wonder and 



THE AETIST OF TANAGRA. 29 

delight ; nor had the stranger proceeded far with 
his words of comfort before, unable to control her- 
self, she fell upon his arm, and, weeping, buried 
there her face in the folds of his ephestrois ; then, 
throwing back her head, fixed on his such star- 
like eyes of adoring gratitude that the stranger 
paused, and placing his hand upon her head, 
which trembled to the touch, he added, " And 
you think through me Athend speaks ? - You 
think she has sent me as her messenger ? You 
think the garland of roses which I wear in her 
honor has something of happy augury in its 
leaves, and that through her grace I can bring a 
joy unknown before into this friendly household, 
whose kindness I shall not soon forget ? " 

Then turning with a certain authority towards 
the staring and perplexed farmer, he continued 
in these words : — 

" You think lightly of these statues and of 
their maker; of their littleness, their poor ma- 
terial, and the homeliness, simplicity, and triviality 
of the subjects of which they treat. You ask for 
marble ; but is there a quarry of it here at Tan- 
agra as there is at Pentelicus? You call these 
trifles perishable. You do not know that noth- 
ing so endures as this baked earth, that when 



30 CHEQUER-WORK. 

the noblest works in bronze and marble may 
have perished, perfect as when leaving their 
artist's hand, their colors fresh as we see them 
now, these slighted proofs of the artistic feeling 
and genius of Greece may remain perhaps their 
only monument ! And you do not know that a 
legend from beyond Byzantium, hoary with the 
knowledge of the fathers of the world, says that 
of this earth man himseK was made, and we our- 
selves talk of the Earth's repeopling through the 
stones which Deucalion threw behind him. If 
there be a thing of earth which is everlasting, it 
is the clay of which these figures are. made ; and 
if it be that man's spirit is immortal, it could not 
be confided while here to any thing fitter than the 
dust of that all engendering mother whose chil- 
dren we are. As to your wish that my young 
friend here should astonish us with the images 
of the gods whom he has never seen, if the great 
sculptors of Athens could in theil* works be as 
sure of their resemblance to the great ones of 
Olympus as you are of the truth to their originals 
of these little Boeotian men and women, they were 
indeed happy. 

" Yes, the young man here has done what he 
could with the material at his hand, and done it 



THE ARTIST OP TANAGRA. 31 

well. He has trusted to Nature and his true eye, 
and Athend is content. She asks of her children' 
no impossibility ; modest as to you seems this 
work, be satisfied, because in it is the soul of a true 
artist. If you think I speak too strongly or with 
too much presumption, you must all learn that I 
have the right to say to this young man, 'Be 
not discouraged, my brother, by a neglect which- 
your genius does not deserve. Your townsmen 
and you yourself will have a better opinion of 
these figures after this. Give me your hand, my 
brother, and be of good cheer, for I, who encour- 
age you, am Phidias.' '* 

After this one can easily imagine that all went 
well with the lovers. The provinces do not dare 
to believe in their geniuses till the central city 
authorizes it. The fact that the great Phidias 
had visited Tanagra, receiving the hospitality of 
one of its considerable townsmen, that he had 
spoken well of the wine of Tanagra, and that he 
had given his great authority to the excellence of 
their sculptor's works, flew like the wind from 
side to side through the town. Many amateurs 
declared that the opinion of Phidias had always 
been their own, that they had moderated a too 
warm expression of admiration for fear of injur- 



a2 CHEQUER-WOBK. 

ing the young man, and that it was easy to see 
that this new kind of art was the simplest and 
best of all. 

Eucharis became a general favorite, and when 
he appeared at the cock-fights, of which the peo- 
ple of Tanagra were fond, he was received with 
acclamations. Such in the olden time was the 
liomage paid to any one who surpassed others in 
the pursuit of the beautiful. 

The coldness with which Crasippus had re- 
garded his future son-in-law melted before the 
smile of Phidias. He was himself apparently 
unconscious of the change, but it was complete. 
He vaunted everywhere the genius and beauty of 
his daughter's lover, and proclaimed himself the 
first to discover the merits of an artist of whom 
Tanagra was proud. He made himself the centre 
of the interest which gathered about their young 
genius. Through his influence was realized all 
that Phidias had predicted. In every house were 
found these little specimens of domestic portrait- 
ure, nor were the people content only to admire 
them during life, but took them down into that 
darkness of the tomb, where Hope almost seems 
expiring, to encourage and comfort them by their 
society. 



THE ARTIST OF TANAGEA. 33 

Crasippus announced to all that he intended 
a magnificent wedding, which should conjoin his 
happiness and glory with those of his illustrious 
son-in-law. He hinted in a prudent whisper that 
he had every reason to hope that his great friend 
Phidias would manage to escape from his labors 
at Athens, to be present at the ceremony. 

The priests of Delium were pleased to give sig- 
nificance to an occasion which they deemed 
important, and the architheorist authorized a 
modest use of his theory with choregic hymns, 
and all that religion connected with illustrious 
nuptials. And in the procession which made a 
fete-day for Tanagra, some of the prettiest statu- 
ettes of Eucharis were carried by fair-haired 
boys in white tunics, as if journeying upon a 
litter. So small were the children, and so tiny 
the litter, that the little figures seemed to live, 
as they stood or reclined in attitudes familiar 
to the spectators. In honor of the handsome 
bridegroom, the verses which we have prefixed to 
our tale, celebrating her native town, by Corinna, 
were sung, followed by a few well-known lines 
of hers in praise of the 'discus, which were appre- 
ciated by all. As this music reached him, Eucha- 
ris, proudly smiling, turned his face to Myrta's, 
3 



34 CHEQUER-WORK. 

and then noticed for the first time that she had 
fastened in her hair a simple rose-leaf which, per- 
haps unobserved by others, meant to him very- 
much. He saw in it the happy augury they had. 
hoped for, the galley of their common fortunes, 
unharmed by rock or breaker, movi ig placidly 
onward in the sunshine towards that great ocean 
of the future in which all lives are lost. 

KoTE. — The illustrations, head of a youth and wild hoar, 
are from photographs of the two sides of an ^tolian coin in the 
author's possession. 




n. 

THE LOVE OF THE FIRST-RATE. 



n. 

THE LOVE OF THE FIKST-EATE. 



A DISPOSITION to be satisfied with only the 
best in the departments of Art, Music, 
and Literature, would seem to be a praiseworthy 
condition of the mind. To aim at achieving the 
best, no one has ever denied to be admirable. 
To hold one's ideal as high as possible is to 
nourish the soul with lofty thinking and an ever- 
ascending scale of desire. 

Certainly if there be an evil in such high am- 
bition, it is not liable to overtake people of 
commonplace character and ordinary training. 
Critics have often said that Boston has some- 
thing of this grave pretension ; that it is never 
content and happy unless it has submitted to it 
works which have passed through the fire, which 
have withstood the flaming test of severe criti- 
cism, and come out the brighter for the trial. 



38 CHEQUER- WOEK. 

In fact, some people say that nothing is ever now 
produced quite good enough for Boston. Shakes- 
peare and Walter Scott and Milton and Flaxman 
may do ; but they are of the past, and the present 
cannot furnish any thing worthy of the noble rage 
of Boston's aesthetic hunger. 

That this love of first-rateness has done much 
for the city in every way cannot be denied. 
Where it has not quite attained to it, it has at 
least heartily struggled for it. From its Public 
Library and Museum of Fine Arts, of both of 
which it is justly proud, down to the humblest of 
the many useful institutions which belt its sub- 
urbs, this spirit of upward endeavor has been for 
a great deal. It is unquestionably this ardent, 
this passionate quest of excellence which has had 
much to do with the name it has achieved of the 
" modern Athens." That architectural and artistic 
perfection which bloomed to the wonder of the 
world in consummate expressions of grace and 
beauty, that more than century-flowering plant, 
our rugged soil is unfriendly to. But if our con- 
ditions, through race and climate, are less favor- 
able to certain ends than befriended our ancient 
namesake, still the temper of the town has al- 
ways been resolute and sleepless to follow in her 
footsteps. 



THE LOVE OF THE FIRST-EATE. 39 

Not only here is the best English written in 
America by poets whose thoughts seem to have 
clarified themselves in the pure sky of Attica, but 
the thunder of the rostrum, as well as its music 
from the lips of a Webster and an Everett, 
echo with something of the classic perfection of 
Demosthenes and the silver-tongued orators of 

Greece. 

« 

If the harsh northern wave will not break upon 
its rugged shore with the soft murmur of the 
^gean, if the many laughters of the sea of 
Homer are saddened to a graver refrain, still the 
sea is there, — the mother of great thoughts, the 
inspirer of poetry and wild adventure. The very 
air, in its crystal purity, reminds the traveller of 
the sky of Hellas ; but it has not for us that soft 
veil of tender sunshine through which all forms 
seem beautiful, and beautiful ones are made 
doubly so. The purity is here, too great even ; 
for the distance asserts itself with a startling au- 
dacity. Forms are well defined, but are not 
lovely, in the unmitigated clearness ; but enough 
of the brightness of the sunshine, enough 
of the purity of the air of Greece, is here, to 
match the claims of our new city to be, in some- 
what, a representative of her enchanting sister. 



40 CHEQUER-WORK. 

Even the faults of the two cities have some- 
thing in common. Boston is no more negligent 
to hear of something new than was Athens. A 
mobility of mind, a perpetual activity, the crown- 
ing of a brief favorite, and soon the weariness of 
possession, an analytical love for the solution of 
all truth, and yet every mental vagary submissive 
before the tribunal of unalloyed common sense, — 
these they both have somewhat in common. 

Even the form of the land on which the cities 
stand is not without a certain resemblance. If 
we have not the broad and lofty platform from 
which the Parthenon could catch the first greeting 
and the last farewell of the Delphian Apollo, still, 
in humble guise, our chief building crowns a cen- 
tral summit, and from its gilded dome, eastward 
and westward, as day comes or goes, shoots a ra- 
diant star of brightness which is really beautiful. 
Our harsh seasons do not invite philosophers to 
linger under the trees of our malls as could Plato 
and his band in shades of the Academy. Our 
Frog-pond certainly is no Ilyssus, but we have a 
bema in Paneuil Hall. And does not the grass- 
hopper, which the Athenian ladies loved and wore 
in their hair, dance in the wind at its top ? But 
the philosophers and wise men in our rigorous 



THE LOVE OP THE FIRST-RATE.. 41 

climate must seek for their listeners the comfort- 
able shelter of the lecture-room. Is not this pas- 
sion for lecturing and being lectured to a truly 
Athenian peculiarity? Where else do you find 
it ? Go to Paris, and you may discover a dozen 
or two dreary and weary scholars following the 
words of men whose reputation fills the world. 
Go to Oxford, and you may witness a learned 
professor discoursing to empty benches, but here, 
the last Athenians, like Mr. Cook, will expound 
the ways of God to man to a ravished auditory, 
or the scientist who exhibits an enlarged ascidian 
on his screen will see the joy of knowledge shin- 
ing in a thousand eyes. 

If we cared to subtilize on such resemblances, 
we might find in that poised balance of the facul- 
ties, that enthroning of reason above the childish 
mistakes of fanaticism, in that Christianity which, 
without pomp of crozier or vestment, finds the 
reasonable God of Unitarianism the natural ex- 
pression of its sedate maturity, and that hospi- 
table indifference of Greece to foreign gods, that 
pantheistic worship of a Deity, who mixes with 
all life, — something more than an accidental 
resemblance. 

The Greeks, careless of possessions, living in 



42 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

the open air, found a divinity in the harmonious 
shapes of things ; their Pantheism sought a person- 
age where we breathe but an essence. Over all, 
nature, their gods, themselves, they threw the 
mantle of beauty. Had we lived then in Athens, 
we might have done as they. Out of the double 
germ of race and environment is the thought of 
man shaped ; a Greek here would be forced to 
give that attention to the importance of property 
which the cheap dress, the poor house, the simple 
meal of his climate did not suggest. It has 
been thought that mind, like water, rises to the 
same level when fed from the same heavenly 
summits. Japan by herself, taking in succession 
all the steps to a consummate civilization, may 
pass for a proof of this. She thought out the 
same thing as others, when having the same 
trained faculties to think with. It could not be 
a plagiarism, neither is it ever mechanical identity. 
Though she may clothe her men in armor, arm 
them with spear and bow and arrow, though she 
may house them in citadels with moat and draw- 
bridge, and cut, as in a Gothic castle, embrasures 
for defence in her turreted walls, yet all remains 
Japanese, though so startlingly reminding us of 
what Europe thought its own. 



THE LOVE OF THE FIRST-RATE. 43 

This influence of environment is so subtle, 
that the attentive and practised traveller recog- 
nizes slight differences everywhere, — each city 
has its special sky and cloud, its quality of sun- 
shine and its characteristic rigors. He can cal- 
culate beforehand, and put on for the time his 
Rome, his Paris, his Vienna, as he might a gar- 
ment which he knows. 

Certainly, in this matter, Boston can find for 
the traveller a very extraordinary coat of its own. 
If he find it comfortable one day, very likely it 
may be to him quite the reverse the next. The 
sky has a humor of its own, and is endless in its 
surprises. That " old Probability " should have 
wrested from the weather-clerk so much of his 
secret must produce great discouragement in 
high quarters ; but even " old Prob " can never 
familiarize us with such variation as makes the 
conservatism of habit, the studied sequence of 
thoughts and feelings an impossibility. Some 
English traveller has spoken of our " mad cli- 
mate." In March it certainly is madder than any 
of its hares ; and even quicksilver seems scarcely 
rapid enough to follow its gambits. 

A bright English woman, speaking of London, ' 
said, " We do- not here have any climate, only 



44 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

weather ; " inversely it may be said of Boston, 
that it has not any weather, only climate. 
, Hogarth seriously believed that the curved and 
easily flowing line he drew upon a palette was 
the line of beauty. May not this zigzag of our 
weather, this awkward and intrusive divergence 
of direction, explain how our love of the beautiful 
here is molested and distui-bed, how our manners 
have neither the sweet repose nor the graceful 
abandon of Eastern people, how our very courtesy 
is best expressed when tehipered by pity, and 
how a general upsetting of old beliefs and old 
habits is easy where incessant change is the law 
of nature and our environment ? 

Some years ago, a minister to London, Mr. 
Stevenson, • remarked to Mr. Sumner, " I have 
heard of the Athens of America, but I have never 
met any of the Athenians ; " and yet Sumner 
was a very good Athenian himself. He lived in 
the region where high purposes are bred from 
high thoughts. He had a love of moral beauty 
such as had the favored scholars who listened to 
Socrates. And do not our ears tingle yet with 
the musical cadences of the many children of 
Harvard, which echoed from the pulpit and the 
rostrum in the days when eloquence had power 
to move men's souls ? 



THE i.OVE OP THE FIRST-RATE. 45" 

When Philip came, Demosthenes was silent 
for ever ; and never again, we fear, will the air of 
New England coin itself into beauty and power 
as once it did from the lips of Webster, Everett, 
and Choate. 

This movement, this rush of life, which will 
not delay though advance be loss, makes us sigh, 
as we glance at the possible future of Boston. 
There is a cruel similitude between the growth 
of a man and a nation ; neither can go backward. 
Both look upon the illusive, shining hours of 
youth's glorious dawn with regretful fondness. 
But they neither can be young again. Every 
other change is possible but that of recovery. 
Hence the regrets of the world for its lost oppor- 
tunities have the passionate personality of an in- 
dividual conscience. Had not that glorious but 
objectionable scholar of Socrates, Alcibiades, 
mad with youth and spirits, learning from his 
teacher only enough to mock at what others re- 
vered, had he not insulted by caricature the 
mysteries of Eleusis, the fate of the world might 
have been changed. Perhaps even that youth of 
Greece, which so largely was the world's youth, 
might have kept its brightness through the pros- 
perity of Athens. What fatal star drove this bril- 



"46 CHEQUER-WORK. 

liant genius into repeated exile, and, by his recall 
from Sicily to Athens, removed the one man who 
might have averted the impending catastrophe, 
and by a success which before had followed him 
like his shadow, have Grecianized Europe, and, 
like some light-handed Hermes, led her along a 
a path of brightness, and saving it perhaps for 
ever from the brutal grasp of Rome's gauntleted 
hand ? 

Some have thought that the heart of the Eleu- 
sinian mysteries was an appeal to man's spiritual 
nature, something which reached beyond his in- 
tellect and imagination to the soul, that soul 
which was getting born into the world, and which 
was so soon to find, in answer to its immortal 
thirst, a fountain springing in that East whence 
had come always the nourishment for man's inner 
nature. It would seem almost as if the death 
penalty must be paid by Athens for her outrage 
of the sacredest thing the gods had given it, and 
that, too, from a scholar of him whom the oracle 
had called the wisest of men, and whose life was 
so important to us that a spiritual guide was 
appointed to him, telling him when to act and 
when to forbear, and which, by its silence at the 
great consummation, authorizes our belief in the 



THE LOVE OP THE FIRST-RATE. 47 

well-doing of the thousand martyrs who have 
given their lives for the truth. Napoleon in- 
sulted the Pope, and through him the guardians 
of religion, and he never prospered afterward. 
Alcibiades slew Athens, and half the hopes of 
man, by an outrage which reminds one of the 
mysterious penalties against " him who sins 
against the Holy Ghost." 

Like an ember dying into ashes, we can seem 
to see the slow withdrawing of that beacon light 
which shone like a point of dazzling brightness 
against the blackness of the surrounding world, 
that gleam in the eyes of Athen^, fading into sor- 
rowful extinction, and hear below the dull roar of 
the triumphant barbarian. With what a pathos 
in their faces must the best Athenians have met, 
feeling that their hearts were gone out of them ! 
How they must have wept as they thought of 
those better days when the parsley was green 
which cooled the fever of the Olympian game, 
and when the olive which Athen^ held sparkled 
through its tender green with the dew of life's 
morning. Such is the cruel law of this world. 
Nations promise in the bud, burst into bloom, 
fill the world with their fragrance, and swiftly 
wither away. 



48 CHEQUER-WORK. 

Have our good people much thought how true 
to this law has been the fate of our New England 
Athens ? Have they considered how the little 
candle the pilgrim brought to brighten the wilder- 
ness expanded and shone till it filled the sky 
with its splendor, and as its light fell upon the 
open Bible, promised here a secure haven for 
every endangered truth ? A light which no 
Roman prelate, no imperial power, should dare 
to touch, and serving, while it freed the spirit, as 
a beacon light to the thronging nations, with the 
additional boon of the prizes of unrestricted 
labor. 

Perhaps this bloom of New England thought is 
the latest truth has fostered in the world's garden. 
How important, how lovely in this flowering, we 
can see, when we place the words " liberty of 
thought" beside those others, " political liberty." 
Thought inoculates the world from a point in its 
surface and through the contagion of a few ; the 
heavenly virus of right government and right 
thinking reaches through the breadth of America 
in every drop of New England blood, and has 
virtue enough to modify, if not eradicate, the old 
diseases of intolerance and bigotry. And we 
know whence came this healing force, who bore 



THE LOYE OP THE FIRST-EATE. 49 

it hither, and who distributed it. With such 
knowledge must not the children of the elected 
ones feel a pride of which they are not ashamed ? 
Is not the arrogance of New England, so irritat- 
ing, at the Capitol, to those owning no such par- 
entage, inevitable ? Without this asperity of 
yirtue, could the Puritan child fitly remember 
the fathers ? With a standard so high, with a 
jealousy of all forms of base control, inherited 
from those who found home unholy if tainted 
by a tyrant's presence, can they do less than 
utter a perpetual protest against an invasion, on 
all sides, of corruption and time-serving, of cheap 
motives and unblushing f raudulency ! 

This Puritan aspiration, seeking the highest 
things, disdainful of earth, if heaven invite it, 
has evidently much to do with that love- of the 
First-Rate which is the subject of our story. 
The mind gets sharply critical when the condi- 
tions of indolent satisfaction are wanting. There 
are people here who simply cannot enjoy. They 
are not mellow and foolish enough for that. The 
strain of their blood does not permit it. Neither 
does the condition of their digestion. Their intel- 
ligence may assent to the excellence of an enter- 
tainment, but they put no heartiness into it. 
4 



50 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

Perhaps their love of the First-Rate is but a climb- 
ing for that prize at the pole's top which they may 
find, when won, no more satisfying to their un- 
practised appetite than were all lesser trophies. 
Some one once said, " Women love to sauce their 
pleasures with a sense of duty." So does a New 
Englander, and it is greatly to his credit, if not 
to his own satisfaction, that he does so. 

There is always a struggle in Boston between 
the contending champions of the beautiful. The 
town will break up into camps ; scholars, regi- 
mented like soldiers, march under opposing flags, 
and the goddess they all worship shows a dif- 
ferent face on every banner. The Italian dis- 
ciple looks with scorn upon the blue eyes and 
flaxen hair that shines from the banner of the 
German votary. The schools of Paris, Munich, 
arid Rome clash like cymbals, nor is their music 
always perfect harmony. 

Nullms addictus jurare in verba magistri 

is a legend which neither party cares to assume 
to itself. The indolent acceptance, the Catholic 
breadth which naturally belong to man's plastic, 
artistic side, are exchanged for a partisanship 
which reminds one of the nuances of the old 



THE LOVE OF THE FIRST-RATE. 51 

doctrinal theology. The gate to the palace Beau- 
tiful, and the gate to Heaven, seem to them both 
to be passed only by a watchword given by the 
master to his little band of followers. 

We must not laugh at this too much, for these 
antagonisms are in our blood. We must be 
patient with ourselves, and yet amid these many 
cries, the tossing of these many banners, how 
New England is surging forward in a direction 
the fathers never pointed out ! No pendulum 
ever hung a second in conflict with the law of 
gravity without rejoicing in the curving descent 
which sent it for a second as high on the oppo- 
site side. By the law of reaction, the Puritan 
fathers gave us Unitarianism, and now they are 
giving us that worship of the beautiful they 
neglected or abhorred. To the lover of human 
nature nothing is more interesting than the play 
of these old well-known forces in a new direction. 
A deacon on a bender inspires a double interest 
in the mood of mind he is leaving behind, t and the 
one to which he is aspiring. So do we witness 
with wondering sympathy these Puritan children, 
hunting the shy goddess through every obscure 
retreat, grappling with the technicalities of color 
and expression, and, like an Adam sketching in 



52 CHEQUER-WORK. 

Paradise, unashamed of the nakedness which to 
Eden was no exposure ; brave little hearts, brave 
little hands, they bear their cross as unflinchingly 
as did the early martyrs ; and they shall be re- 
warded as such earnest spirits should be. Our 
bleak New England Athens shall be the softer 
and sweeter for their coming. They shall dress 
the angles of our too busy life with garlands 
which the muses shall furnish ; they shall temper 
work with leisure, selfishness with liberality ; and 
mitigate life with something which the seasons 
here do not bring to us. 

But unfortunately we must not always suppose 
that this love of the first-rate is purely a capacity 
for enjoyment of only the highest things. It maty 
be rather a dijEficulty of enjoyment of any thing. It 
is through the judgment that the taste is reached. 
What that condemns as second-class, it would be 
improper to delight in. Consequently we hear 
the plea of superiority at once set up for the 
successful claimant of our attention. Music 
must be not only delightful harmony, but it must 
have a lofty moral intention which purifies while 
it elevates us. The painter whose method is 
approved must so absorb to himself all excel- 
lence, that other methods, other artists, are 



THE LOVE OF THE FIRST-BATE, 53 

ignored or condemned. Criticism, instead of 
taking the shape of explanation of the merits 
of a work, confines itself to a notice of its de- 
merits. With some people, criticism is con- 
sidered sound in proportion as it is severe. It 
is probable that at last the atrabilious critic 
loses his power of enjoyment, the sense of happi- 
ness, before good work ; and he teaches his 
readers to share his condition. 

It might have been safely predicted that 
" Punch and Judy " would not have crossed tiio 
water with the Puritans. That Italian vagabond, 
modified by English brutality, would seem to be the 
embodiment in little of all the Puritans struck at 
through the theatre. His box contained but one 
personage in whom a Puritan could find interest ; 
and he was treated with an indecorum which was 
worse than blasphemous. The advent here of 
Punch was long delayed. But at last his merry 
squeak was heard crossing the ocean, and he has 
for some years set up his tent upon our beautiful 
Common. The Irishman, in coming to America, 
is said to part with his careless merriment and 
his fun. A vote sobers him. And so, perhaps, 
the squeak of Mr. Punch has lost something of its 
impudent and confident attractiveness. Nor is he 



54 CHEQUER-WORK. 

shown to uproarious children before sunny balco- 
nies, but holds a kind of state within the branch- 
ing mall. The faces of the spectators then are 
worth studying. They will not easily surrender. 
They seem to wish seriously to know what it is 
all about. Every philanthropist in the crowd is 
of course agonized to witness the hard knocks 
that irrepressible club bestows on either side. 
The wise man considers this junction of hilarity 
with murder as strangely suggestive of Henry 
the Eighth, and his puppets. It seems to him 
the bottom fact of the English character, and he 
goes away highly philosophical and despondent. 
You will also notice that when the hat goes round 
there is not much put into it. Why should not 
they all get the best of a bargain which was so 
inchoate ? 

We have referred above to the law of the flower- 
ing of a city or nation as short. The common 
period of this extraordinary productiveness is 
about a hundred years. So it has been every- 
where, from the days of Pericles to those of 
Elizabeth, from the time of Michel Angelo to 
that of Kembrandt. And may we not justly fear 
that we are now seeing the " bright consummate 
flower" of New England's civilization? Have 



THE LOVE OP THE FIRST-RATE. 55 

we sap still running which has not expressed yet 
itself in flower and fruit through the last hundred 
years ? 

Mr. Charles Darwin once said in a letter that 
he thought there were clustered round Harvard 
University enough minds of ability to furnish 
forth all England's universities. "We honor and 
admire that glorious galaxy of wits, that con- 
stellation whose brightness reaches so far. But 
it cannot shine for ever, nor is it likely that the 
heavens can furnish forth readily a substitute for 
its loss. The great names of New England from 
beyond the boundaries of Harvard, from Jonathan 
Edwards and Channing in the past to Morse and 
Bryant, do we not seem to see them written, tab- 
leted on the leaves of that great tree of Culture 
whose roots are dark with Puritan anguish and 
struggle, but whose clustered fruits now hang, 
ripe and radiant, before the gazing nations. 

Slow be the destiny, reluctant the hand which 
shall touch with extinction the masters of the 
hour, the leaders in thought, the almoners of the 
muses. And while they yet stay with us, let us 
salute them reverentially, happy to know that 
they are ours, and sorrowful with the thought 
that Nature may not readily recover such again. 



ni. 

UNA REPLICA. 



III. 

UNA EEPLICA. 



"X T 7'B were a party accidentally collected at one 
' of the summer hotels which fringe the 

coast of New England. Strangers at first, we 
had got shaken together comfortably, and learned 
the art of making ourselves as helpful and satis- 
factory a society as if we had been old friends. 
We formed plans together, and got to know each 
other's strong points ; and while the lovers of the 
sea would be bobbing for perch or cod, those who 
had less confidence in tlie strength of their stom- 
achs were contriving inland excursions, or in- 
structing the young ladies in the mysteries of 
water-colors. When the elements of such a part 
are happily constituted, not only they fit together 
charmingly, but the hour of parting leaves a long 
regret behind it. 

In the evening, infatuated lovers of chess or 



60 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

b^zique would pursue their pleasure in the glare 
of candles, unheedful of their buzzing and vigi- 
lant enemy overhead. But the larger groups in 
the shadow of the veranda would watch the dia- 
mond-spark of the far light-house flash and fail, or 
listen drowsily to the mellow monotony of waves, 
whose lines of foam, ebbing from the rocks in the 
twilight, the eye could scarcely follow. 

To fill up the hollow night with interest, tales 
were told, old adventures narrated, and as we 
grew more intimate, personal incidents would 
risk a confidence which, it was felt, friendship 
could not abuse. 

Among our number were a handsome couple, 
the man an American, but the lady French, who, 
from the day of their arrival, had intrigued us all. 
The man had not quite that positive practical air 
which we expect in our countrymen, for there 
was a dash of romance and enthusiasm in his 
large gray eye, which shone at its fullest as it 
looked into the clear, courageous one of his com- 
panion. The lady had an olive complexion and 
dark, firmly planted hair, and was dressed so as 
slightly to suggest an old-time beauty of the days 
of the Grand Monarque. 

We all longed to know more about them, but 



UNA EEPLICA. 61 

dared not ask ; but one day, they had been on a 
rather long excursion, to a neighboring town, to 
examine, in one of the old colonial houses, a pic- 
ture with which both their lives had been con- 
nected. Their visit kindled in them so strong 
a feeling of common interest, brought back so 
vividly the days of the past, that, most unex- 
pectedly we got what we desired. When we had 
all assembled in the dusk of the piazza, and in- 
quiries had been made as to the pleasure of their 
excursion and its object, suddenly the moon sailed 
from behind a promontory, and threw to our feet 
such a trail of splendor, that we burst into ex- 
clamations of admiration. 

But to the French lady it seemed to make a 
personal appeal, to be her moon and not ours, for 
turning quickly to her husband she exclaimed : 
" See ! Stephen, there is our moon, as we have 
loved her, when she travelled with Gabrielle, a 
lamp to light her across that dreadful waste." 

After this, there was little difficulty made in 
getting us an explanation. So after a modest 
preface, excusing himself as if he felt the moon's 
command too much when added to our desire, her 
husband gave us the following narrative : — 

I tell it, as he did, in the first person. 



62 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

Man floods with life the objects which daily- 
surround him : not only do living things, the 
flowers of his garden, the trees of his lawn, seem 
to be a part of Mmself , but even inanimate objects 
share in his magnetism ; not only the flower which 
he loves, the tree whose stateliness adds a dignity 
to his life, but the book, the picture, furniture of 
his house, are bathed in his personality, and each, 
after acquaintance, seems an extension of himself. 
The thousand converging rays from the heart and 
brain, which make for him what he calls home, 
surround his life as with an atmosphere in which 
he breathes and is happy. The vitality of a per- 
son is in some degree to be measured by the 
character and interest of these surroundings. 
When we see a house studiously bare of beauty, 
with few objects in it to charm or delight one, it 
is reasonable to suppose the inhabitant to live in 
this stifling atmosphere of denial, for want of 
heart enough to gather to himself objects of desire 
and affection. 

To enter some rooms is like entering a tomb. 
The dweller there is alive after his fashion ; but 
he is self-centred, impoverished of imagination, 
dull to suggestion, if he can so abide and be 
happy. Other houses repeat, as from, a thousand 



UNA REPLICA. 63 

mirrors, the preferences, the taste, the individual- 
ity of their occupants : before they have entered 
the room, we vaguely feel their presence, and 
sympathize with that life of which they make a 
part. Nor is this dower of selection the peculi- 
arity of the rich. The poor can show it in their 
humble way as well as the affluent. The climb- 
ing vine, the cheap flower-pot, crowned by the 
favorite posy of its owner, the select chromo- 
lith. ; the photograph recalling a scene or a person 
long loved ; a care in the dressing of the room 
with suitable color ; and the pride of preferred 
stuffs or papers, — may show as intelligent ex- 
pression of taste, in its modest way, as can the 
lordliest villa. 

The bottom of the whole matter seems to be 
love. Rooms and houses which express this, we 
love too, and which we deny easily to ostentation 
and mere costliness. It seems as if not only was 
the marriage of the flesh and the spirit made in 
heaven, but that there existed between people of 
this feeling and material things, a bond which 
draws them together. A certain book, a certain 
picture, seems to have waited long, in silence 
and despondency, till its lover came, then for 
evermoi:e they are married to his life, and share 



64 CHEQUEE-WORK. 

in his being. And this is why a pang and 
shudder accompany the return to earth of tlie re- 
mains of those dear to us, and with whom our 
existence was mixed. It is felt by survivors, and 
follows the death agony at a sale where objects 
nearest and dearest are entrusted to strangers. 
There is nothing sadder than this parcelling of a 
complete life, these cold, unwonted hands touch- 
ing things yet flooded with the affectionate care 
of their deceased possessor. We wish to think 
that these exiles from home must pine for^the 
love they miss, and coldly return the coquetry 
of their new ravisher. This feeling makes part 
of the pathos with which we gaze into violated 
tombs, where haply we may behold in the yawn- 
ing sarcophagus, the bronze mirror, the golden 
bracelet of the mother, and not far off, beside 
her child, the wreck of its former nursery, — 
its terra-cotta dolls and little go-cart, silly inno- 
cent toys, of a life quenched in its morning; 
and, still farther on, the bronze shield and 
sword, and the armor fallen from that once ma- 
jestic manhood, and which called these others 
wife and child. 

Not only does the hat a man wears get the 
shape of his head, but it seems to speak of him, 



UNA REPLICA. 65 

as does his cane, or the coat which he has often 
worn. On seeing them we seem to see him ; the 
other hats and canes which we meet in an ante- 
chamber say to us nothing if we do not know 
their possessors. 

Sometimes we will pause before this hat or 
cane, and a waft of additional intelligence will 
break like a side light into the recess where his 
memory is stored. What would we not have 
given to see the glove, the dress, and all the 
rest of the great ones whose words, whose deeds, 
still vibrate through the centuries. Beyond the 
Egyptian room in the Louvre there used to be 
the cocked hat of the Emperor Napoleon. There 
was magic in it ; it seemed to radiate power and 
glory as from a sun. Beside it were the green 
coat, the breeches, the boots, of the great man ; 
all hung over with interest and curiosity by vis- 
itors. But it was the little cocked hat, that hid 
that scheming and insatiable brain, which chiefly 
riveted all eyes ; even the richly wrought but un- 
used sword was as nothing to it. Such is the 
power of an inanimate object upon human feeling. 

Among inanimate objects, perhaps pictures 
hold the paramount place, for they are not wholly 
5 



6G CHEQUER-WOEK. 

inanimate. The canvas is saturated through 
and through with the thought which is wrought 
there. It has its beauty as nature sifted through 
a human brain, the cleverness which can make a 
figure or landscape live again. But more than 
that, there comes breathing from the surface the 
passion, the purpose, the personality of the man 
who made it. Perhaps this was the reason why, 
while I often dined in one of those quaint old- 
fashioned houses which fringe our seaboard, 
leaving to ghostly sileiice the life which has 
ebbed to people newer towns, I would, in the 
midst of the liveliest conversation, fade away 
from the hearing of it into dreamland at the 
beckoning of a picture there. I somehow could 
not escape the eye of the figure painted in it. 
The eyes of the guests seemed far away and un- 
real, but those of the picture the only ones living 
and present. And as we sometimes think, seeing 
such portraits, that we have either met the ori- 
ginal before, or that we shall meet it hereafter, 
that there is something between them and us, 
which we obscurely divine, but implicitly believe 
in, so now I felt something of this. This din- 
ing-room was old, with the antique dignity of 
Queen Anne's day. Though the broad panels, 



UNA REPLICA. 67 

wider than most trees we see now, the crocket- 
tings and flourishes of the wood-work, the quaint 
carven and painted garlands looped below the 
ceiling, looked fresh while old, the picture sunk 
above the mantelpiece between quaintly carved 
colonettes looked older, yet fresher than these. 
It was a picture of a girl in the dress of the time of 
Louis Quatorze, but treated with sylvan additions. 
The powdered hair was carried over its cushion 
with its one or two depending tresses ; point de 
Venise hung far up upon the half-bared arm, the 
corsage descended as usual then, farther than na- 
ture would have wished, while from the shoulders 
waved gently to the breeze a mantelet of azure, 
bound with a broad band of gold, and beneath it 
and across the figure hung a garland of what 
seemed living flowers. I shall not say that the face 
was beautiful, that the little patches relieved the 
roses of a faultless cheek, for I fear those roses 
were paint, and taken from the same box as were 
the patches. But the ensemble was delightful. 
There was mischief in the parted lips, gay with a 
playful smile. But it was the eyes which looked 
with such scrutiny into yours, so brave and fear- 
less, yet behind which all the coyness of a girl, all 
the dignity of a lady of rank, seemed somehow 



68 - CHEQUER-WORK. 

hidden away, which held me. The eyes interro- 
gated yours with a direct look, but also told you 
something in return. What they told me was of 
romantic adventure, gayety tempered by the dis- 
tress of civil war, of dark and anxious days, cloven 
as by a beam of brightness. They seemed not to 
ask but to command sympathy. I readily sub- 
mitted to this command, and adopted this imag- 
inary being into a friendship, ghostly indeed, but 
not without its charm. This lady, whom I could 
never know, became for me a heroine, and I for her 
a preux chevalier. We sealed our engagement 
with a mutual look which none understood but our- 
selves, and thus it was that while the festal cheer 
rang high, I fled from the click of glasses, and the 
laughter which bubbled with the champagne, a 
bold rider at her side over waste plains, while 
here and there rqse the smoke of a burning vil- 
lage, or a gun-shot startled the silence which the 
moon had bidden the night to keep. And though 
the persijl.ag-e of the dinner guests would follow 
me, though dishes went and came, I still rode on 
bravely at her side, till suddenly the dream, the 
picture and all, dropped from me like a mist, and 
I found myself joining in the merriment of the 
others at my abstraction. It was not long be- 



UNA EEPLICA. 69 

fore this tic of mine was known to all and sub- 
mitted to as a most innocent form of gallantry. 
The lady of the house would sometimes say to 
her friends, " You will see that he will dream 
over this unknown fair one till, in his craze, like 
another Don Quixote, he will set forth in search 
of her. And I dare say, if she were yet alive 
and he could find her, she would prove no more 
angelic than that worthy knight found his Dul- 
cinea." 

Of course I asked the history of the picture. 
My fair friend said that every thing about it was 
utterly unknown, and that she had bought it be- 
cause it exactly covered her panel, for the modest 
sum of thirty dollars. 

She only knew that its date was of the seven- 
teenth century, and that it was painted by Nattier, 
a court painter of that epoch, whose name it 
bore. 

But later, as my visits to the picture grew 
more infrequent, and finally ceased altogether, I 
thought of it less and less, till finally both the 
picture and my dream concerning it wholly faded 
from my mind. 

Not long after this I found myself travelling, as 
interest or fancy dictated, up and down the coun- 



70 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

tries of Europe. I had made in the course of this 
wandering, on board a Mediterranean steamer, 
acquaintance with a pleasant French family, re- 
siding in the south of France. They described 
so agreeably the beauty of the country they 
inhabited, accompanying it with an invitation to 
visit them, that I could not refuse. I therefore, 
on my way from Marseilles north, left the rail- 
road, and by a country wagon, over jolting, neg- 
lected roads, made my way to their chateau. I 
found the scenery near it beautiful, as they prom- 
ised me. There was a forest on one side, not 
one of those choked and intricate ones, where 
bushes and undergrowth delay one, but clear 
spaces, which the French call clarieres, and majes- 
tic trunks of maple and chestnut, with here and 
there an oak soaring so high as to give one the 
sense of walking in a vast cathedral. 

It was like the wood in which G. P. R. James 
finds his two travellers at the opening of one of 
his novels ; or like that wood painted by AUston, 
where Florimel, of Spencer's Faerie Queen, flies 
on her horse before the admiring spectator. 

The open fields near the wood sometimes had 
reapers in them, and the golden sheaves stood in 
rows, the reapers occupied in binding them, thus 



UNA REPLICA. 71 

making that scene old as the world, expressive, as 
nothing else does, of the fruitfulness of earth and 
man's happy relation with her bounty. Along the 
hedge-rows there, those slender trees so eminently 
French, bearing a tuft of foliage only, upon the 
long slim stems, and which we so commonly see 
in French pictures, stood in strong contrast with 
their robuster brothers of the forest. The area of 
cultivation extended but on one side, and not 
very far beyond it stretched plains, or broken 
elevations of barrenness, picturesque in their rude 
beauty, and showing here and there a gleaming 
pool fringed with the sword-like bulrush. 

The chateau in front betrayed great age and 
several epochs. It was not wanting in towers 
topped by the pointed roof, which looks like an 
extinguisher over the brightness of past days. 

No French chateau would be complete without 
these. But the body of the house was evidently 
fashioned from what remained of more fortress- 
like walls than are usually seen to accompany 
these tourelles. * 

Over the gray stones, not far from the antique 
carvings of the door, I was made happy to see, what 
reminded me of my country, a creeper of Virginia, 
whose beauty and rapid growth have made for 



72 CHEQUEE-WORK. 

it a home in so many parts of Europe. It 
stained with crimson the gray blocks, in marked 
contrast to the unchanging green, lustrous yet 
yelvet-like, of Europe's ivy. I had small time to 
study the beauty of this frontage or examine the 
character and period of the quaint carvings round 
the entrance, for at a signal of the porter the hos- 
pitable family swarmed forth with cries of wel- 
come and surprise at my achievement of a passage 
over their difficult roads. 

The men seized me in their arms and kissed 
me on both cheeks, while the ladies stood laugh- 
ingly aloof, in those simple summer muslins which 
it would seem only French ladies know how to 
make and to wear. No English or American 
belle has achieved this distinguished plainness. 
On seeing it, one would say that Paris and its 
ball-rooms had never existed. One feels com- 
placently how, in this delicate art of the modiste, 
simplicity is the basis of true art, and, when suc- 
cessful, snatches a grace which Worth can never 
know. I was at once made at home in the 
chateau, told the hours of the repasts, taken to 
my room, while the mysteries of closet, bureau, 
and g-arde-robes were explained, and then left to 
my meditation till the hour of the approaching 



. UNA REPLICA. 73 

lunch. That was made doubly light by the ex- 
cellence of the cooking, the absence of heavy 
joints, and the gayety and laissez-aller which 
prevailed. 

The conversation was a ripple of merriment 
consisting of anecdotes of the day, adventures, 
nothing in themselves, but made amusing by the 
skill of the narrator, and the witty comments of 
the rest. All were invited to take a share in the 
discussion of plans to make my sojourn agree- 
able. One was to visit a ruined abbey beyond 
the forest, to decide upon the road thither, and 
whether or no a country neighbor should be 
taken en route. Then the proper day for a 
hunt of the wild boar was considered with much 
solemnity, the deciding votes for this being con:- 
fined to the gentlemen who were visitors ; but all 
again shared — the young ladies especially — with 
recovered vivacity in the project of a picnic at 
the famous half-ruined mediaeval castle, the pride 
of the Department, whose name, of Mont Blazon, 
was continued in the chateau. This was at the 
distance of two or three leagues, — horses were 
necessary, — therefore all rose at once, with the 
excitement and flutter of pigeons taking wing, to 
proceed directly to the stables, that each might 



74 CHEQUER-WORK. 

select a suitable one. As this was rather a 
famous sporting country, the count had provided 
himself, against the arrival of friends, who some- 
times came in unexpected numbers, with a dozen 
capital saddle horses. 

As he was rather an Anglo-maniac, he not only 
had a stable built as nearly as possible after the 
English pattern, though keeping French names 
for all but his English horses, — which names on 
neat porcelain plates showed above the stalls, — 
but he had one or two English grooms, with an 
apparent brevity of leg and extension of body under 
the striped waistcoat that would have rejoiced the 
heart of Sam Weller to behold. There were 
Russian, American, as well as French, horses, and 
even one delicate Arab who looked like a lady 
among gentlemen. 

The notion so common, that French country 
life is a sham or a mistake, was soon shown to 
be thoroughly untrue. Not only was there an 
occupation for every hour, a variety of amuse- 
ment which never failed, but all was entered into 
and enjoyed in a way that showed that the family 
knew the country and loved it. And the pleasure 
that I myself had was reflected in the eyes 
of their sympathetic hospitality. They enjoyed 



UNA REPLICA. 75 

every thing doubly because they saw I did. And 
their own eagerness to please, and their delightful 
sallies, made no small part of my pleasure. It 
might prove tiresome to give in detail the daily 
incidents of the agreeable month I spent there. 
When I say month, I am obliged to acknowledge 
that the almanac said so, but if I trusted only to 
my grateful memory of the time, I think I should 
consider it many months. 

Not a small part of my entertainment consisted 
of visits to the neighboring gentry. I do not know 
why it is, but we never think of French country 
people as they sometimes are in their perhaps en- 
forced solitude. Wherever in France we think of 
a Frenchman, we suppose him to be the same thea- 
tre-loving, cafe-haunting trotter of the asphalte, 
whom we have seen in Paris ; but the hobereau 
and his country dame are often great originals. 
M. Droz has given us some of them; but in the 
remoter provinces there must be many lying yet 
fossil-like in their seclusion, unless the feverish 
life of to-day reaches even them and make them 
one more of that national troupeau, which in 
each country is effacing old distinctions, obliter- 
ating individuality, to finally fashion men, as 
some one has cleverly said, like the modern gun, 



76 CHEQUER-WORK. 

not only all alike, but with mutually convertible 

parts. 

The boar-hunt was a great success ; the boar 
was despatched in the most artistic fashion, the 
" humbles " given to the dogs [whence humble 
pie], the Mre brought home amid the f anfat'e of 
twenty bugles, and the chorus of as many dogs. 
The picnic at the castle, though like most picnics 
it had a little undesired water brought from over- 
head, was brilliant and sparkling. Those young 
faces relieved against the mouldering stones ; tlie 
rugged archway which sent back a mocking pro- 
test against our invasion of its repose ; the 
laughter which came back from walls which 
seemed to stir with the long-forgotten sound, and 
the general pleasure of contrast between the day's 
content and the far past which it flouted, — made 
a great success, too, of this day's pleasure. But 
when we had taken our fill of excursions out of 
doors, and when the fatigue of accumulated ram- 
bles had made the house attractive, it was a new 
pleasure to hear old county histories told with au- 
thority by the count's mother, of the gossip of the 
prefecture, and family legends of neighbors, whose 
names live emblazoned on the pages of French 
history. Stories of their own family, with ram- 



UNA EEPLICA. 77 

bles to turreted rooms, where some ancient chate- 
laine had pined while her lord rode in arms beside 
his king ; the mysterious chamber with the con- 
demned staircase, where rumor with white lips 
whispers of an ancient wrong and a guilty return- 
ing sprite still infesting the shadows of the dark- 
ened walls, — every thing, in short, was thought 
of which could amuse or terrify a visitor, till sud- 
denly Mademoiselle Gabrielle, clapping her hands, 
exclaimed, " Let us show him the family jewels." 
Saying this, she disappeared with a laugh, but 
soon returned with a tray full of heir-looms. 
There were chitelaines whence depended vin- 
aigrettes, brooches, and scissors of the antiquest 
pattern ; rivieres of diamonds set as no modern 
Parisian jeweller would approve ; a shining galaxy 
of milky pearls ; snuff-boxes of all sorts, — some of 
lapis lazuli with a crest on the upper side, others 
made from what seemed a single crystal, — and lit- 
tle quaint oblong ones bound in a golden tracery of 
silver, vexed by the graver's tool into a frosted 
maze of harmonious curves. There were stars of 
enamel, knightly badges, and orders both native 
and foreign. But while carelessly delving through 
this riot of richness, my attention was arrested by 
a face in a miniature which seemed familiar. I 



78 CHEQUER-WORK. 

drew it forth, and carefully perused the image 
of the lady there represented. As I looked, it 
seemed to nod and smile toward me as to an old 
acquaintance; but the garb puzzled me, — it was* 
evidently a woman's face, but the half -military 
dress was that of a man. A feather drooped from 
the broad hat which partly shaded the forehead, 
while the doublet had a Rosalind-like jauntiness 
which the dimpled hand resting upon the pommel 
of a dagger but emphasized the more. I looked 
up inquiringly into the laughing face of Gabrielle 
which was bent over me. " And is this Hero a 
lady," I said, " and is she of your house? " "Yes 
indeed," she cried, " of my house, and the pride 
of it also. This is my famous ancestress, my 
namesake, who saved the chateau from pillage in 
the days of the Fronde." As she spoke, an ex- 
pression of pride broke over her laughing features, 
and taking from me the miniature she regarded it 
steadily long in silence. Her gaze, lier sympathetic 
admiration, seemed to draw something from the 
miniature" which revealed their relationship. One 
face was reflected in the other as in a mirror. As 
I gazed at her with wonder, she looked the living 
image of the dream I had cherished so long. A 
light shone in my brain, illuming many things : 



UNA REPLICA. 79 

a meaning was now given to an impulse which 
before I could not explain. I seemed, after wan- 
dering through mist and uncertainty, through 
dark ways where my feet had stumbled, to have 
suddenly come to a brightness and peace which 
explained every thing. I felt and divined the 
character of the daughter of my host as if I had 
long known her. My absorption in the study of 
the face which in America had so fascinated me, 
I transferred to this new acquaintance ; for one 
explained the other. With a tumult of conflict- 
ing feelings, a dream-like confusion of the present 
and the past, I impulsively placed my hand upon 
her arm, saying, " And so it was you indeed who 
rode through the darkness over that dreadful 
waste, in disguise, that you might save your house 
and its family." 

She pushed back her chair with a start, and 
fixed on me eyes mute with wonder and astonish- 
ment. " I ! " she said, " oh that I could have lived 
in those days, when devotion and valor counted 
for something, when woman was not the toy of 
fashion, the slave of propriety, but when she 
could rise joyously equal to the hour of dan- 
ger, a heroine, not only in heart, but in action 
and history ! Not I, indeed, was it who rode 



80 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

linked in friendship by the side of the duchess of 
Longueville, and who won for herself one of the 
heroes of that time." As she spoke, her flash- 
ing eye and grand demeanor brought out her 
resemblance to the miniature in greater clearness, 
while at the same time some accident of her dress 
and the roses in her corsage reminded me keenly 
of the face at home, which had once for me such 
witchery. 

" And is this miniature the only portrait of 
your ancestress ? " 

" Yes, the only one we now possess ; but we 
had another taken of her in a gala dress, by a 
famous court painter, which disappeared during 
the French Revolution, when for a while the 
chateau was held by the Jacobins. In that por- 
trait, painted by Nattier, my ancestress wore a 
frank smile and a garland of roses across her old- 
fashioned dress." 

" Yes," I said, " and a single pearl in each ear, 
and a mantle on her shoulder, of blue, with edges 
of gold." 

" And are there wizards then in America ; for 
you either read my thought or know too much. 
I was on the point of speaking of these details my- 
self. Can you explain the meaning of your 



UNA EEPLICA. 81 

words, or was it a luckj accident or coincidence 
only, which made you speak as you did ? " 

I felt a certain embarrassment fully shared by 
my companion, in the growing interest I knew 
not how to express in Gabrielle, while she, instinc- 
tively recognizing this, betrayed through her di- 
lated eyes a fear that something uncanny might 
be at^the bottom of it all. 

" Perhaps' you had better tell me the story of 
the heroic adventure of your ancestress, — for 
there was one, was there not ? and then I will try 
and tell you how I came to know of the pearl 
earrings and the blue mantle." 

" I will tell you the story if you wish, if, indeed, 
you have it not already by heart, as you seem to 
be at home in the secrets of our house. It was 
djiring the Fronde, when France was much dis- 
turbed, that this happened. The quarrels of the 
court, and the outbreak of the people at Paris, 
were not of very long duration. But there was 
enough to show here and there, in the readiness 
of the peasants to break with their %ncient seign- 
iors and indulge in rapine and bloodshed, a hint 
of that uneasiness in the lower classes which, 
during a later reign, culminated in the horrors of 
the French Revolution . Any local suffering or the 



82 CHEQTJER-WORK. 

presence of a dangerous ringleader sufficed as a 
starting point for excesses which were before long 
repressed. As yet the people did not know itself, 
and had no thought of wholly freeing itself from 
partisanship with one or another of the nobles. 
Famine had not sharpened enough as yet the 
savage instinct, burst all barriers, and laid waste 
the possessions of the opulent, nor added to this 
spirit any wide-spread murder. My ancestors 
therefore lived quietly in their chateau, notwith- 
standing that the head of the house and his only 
son were with the army at the frontier. Indeed 
in tbose days news was so imperfectly conveyed, 
that they trusted there was exaggeration in the 
rumors which from time to time came from Paris. 
So hoping that the cloud would soon blow over, 
the ladies of the chateau lived coyly and with 
discretion within their walls, and cheered them- 
selves with the letters which told of the speedy 
return of their cavaliers, and with household 
occupations which they multiplied to drown care,' 
and supply fomething better than anxiety for 
their minds. 

" But one evening, his garments in disorder, and 
with a white face, a gardener of the chateau burst 
in upon the circle of ladies silently occupied with 



UNA EEPLICA. 83 

their needles, and, throwing himself at the foot 
of the chatelaine, began to stammer his errand. 
He said that he had heard from a younger cousin, 
who was a peasant of the neighborhood, that his 
brother peasants had been excited to frenzy by 
the exhortations of emissaries of the Fronde, 
and that, taking advantage of the unprotected 
state of the house, they were plotting to assail 
the chateau by dawn, and were busily beating up 
recruits for that purpose. 

' ' He described them as a motley crew, not a 
soldier among them, and without arms except the 
scythes, reaping hooks, and flails with which they 
were familiar. It was already nine o'clock of the 
evening and dark, but the moon, which rose late, 
would brighten every thing at last to guide a 
traveller. There arose from the group a cry of 
consternation and terror. The few servants of 
the chSteau were hastily mustered, ordered to 
be watchful of every sight and sound, and to bolt 
and fasten all the outer doors. There were those 
among them, loyal to their mistress, who ac- 
cepted the burden of the charge thus laid upon 
them, and rose to the occasion. They brought 
from the outhouses great beams of wood, ready 
to be planted against the doors, so as to keep the 



84 CHEQ-TJER-WORK. 

foe at bay and baffle bis assault. They brought 
provisions from the storehouse, and meat and 
vegetables, and lodged them near the centre of 
the house, in readiness for a siege ; they furbished 
up the old arquebusses, seeking for powder and 
balls, and saw that the pikes and sabres were in 
serviceable order ; indeed their preparations were 
so thorough that a sense of security warmed the 
ladies' hearts, and the old smiles returned to their 
faces. But Gabrielle did. not smile, a frown 
darkened her brow of ivory. Offended pride 
dilated her slight nostrils, as, leaping suddenly 
forth from the circle, in ringing accents she ex- 
claimed, ' You do them too much honor — you do 
them too much honor ; this coil of vipers would 
sting the hand which fed them. Not with honor- 
able arms, the pike and the sword, should they be 
chastised back to their nest, the cart-whip and 
the baton are good enough for them. They shall 
find that, if the master be away, there is blood 
enough in those who are left to teach them their 
duty.' ' Gabrielle, Gabrielle,' cried her mother 
and sisters, ' remember that though you have the 
knightly spirit, we are but weak women after 
all.' Seeing something of resolution in her 
face, beyond even what her words expressed, 



UNA REPLICA. 85 

they cried, ' How can you protect us ? what 
shall we do ? ' 

" ' I have already decided,' she said. ' Only 
see to it that you keep a brave spirit in your 
breasts, have the courage to wait without flinch- 
ing, and I will do the rest. Nor have I a 
moment to lose.' 

" This said, she darted among the offices to a 
press which held the servants' liveries, and pres- 
ently returned, tlie prettiest little groom you ever 
saw, a dagger at her side, and a saucy feather 
in her cap. ' And now, Jacques, hurry to the 
stable and saddle Diomed, the horse my father 
and I love best.' 

" ' You would not leave us, then,' wailed, in a 
chorus, the afflicted family. 

" ' Only to return, I trust, with what may scourge 
these knaves back to their holes, and comfort 
you all. Have you not heard that the marquis of 
St. Aldegonde, and some say the great duchess, 
with a troop of horse, are at this moment only 
some four leagues away to the northwest, and that 
is the side opposite to the centre, as Jacques tells 
me, where these unclean rebels are mustering.' 
As they looked into the intrepid face of Gabrielle, 
all saw and felt that she was equal to the cruel 



86 CHEQUEE-WOEK. 

task she imposed upon herself. Her booted heels 
struck fire from the clashing spurs as she paced 
the chamber, and the prediction of triumph sat 
royally in her clear blue eye. 

" ' I go alone,' she said, ' and in the dress of a 
serving-man, to be the less remarked ; and I go at 
once, before the moon rises, that the dusk may 
hide me.' 

" So saying, amid blessings and tears, she 
kissed them all and disappeared. 

" With straining eyes the deserted women sought 
to distinguish the vague bulk which the courser 
made in the darkness, something of a nodding 
plume and light and agile figure, and little in- 
deed they discerned ; but the clatter of hoofs soon 
diminished by distance was clearly audible, and 
hope went with that sound till the distance 
swallowed it. 

" A little unused country road through the wood 
buried Gabrielle in darkness, but, giving the horse 
its head in spite of it, she drove the rowels into 
its flank, and soon yon great W9,ste beyond the 
wood stretched before her, she apparently its only 
occupant. 

" Like a dream she glided over its undulating 
surface ; here and there what she might fancy a 



UNA REPLICA. 87 

marauder or wild beast startled her for an instant, 
but she held bravely on, and she taught herself to 
believe these forms mere tricks of the imagina- 
tion. She knew that to open her mind to such 
Ideas was defeat and ruin. She .contemplated 
only the end. She permitted no intrusive fears. 
To reach the troop of horse, and that by the 
most direct line, was all she thought of. 

" Once or twice at the horizon's edge a crimson 
gleam, a ruddy flare, made her heart beat, for 
she knew it meant that the work of destruction 
had begun. She turned away her head from the 
eddying smoke which brought with it baleful 
stars in mockery of those in heaven, when sud- 
denly, afar, a flame brighter, clearer, more start- 
ling than any, for a moment fairly arrested her 
career, for it was in the very line of her journey 
and might make its termination impracticable. 
As with parted lips she gazed, and with ungloved 
hand patted Diomed, trying to cheer herself by 
caressing him, suddenly, with a bound, the great 
and radiant moon, spurning earth, arose, and 
looked at her with so calm and reassuring a face 
that she at once knew she should not fail. 

" Well and swiftly they rode together, the gleam- 
ing figure of the maiden, the shining outline of 



88 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

the horse, and that long oblique silhouette of them 
both, across the glimmering plain. Soon she had 
left anxiety afar, for the smouldering torch-light 
of rapine had died behind the plain. She could 
distinguish objects both near and far, enough 
to give precision to her thoughts and kill the 
dread which lives with mystery. In an hour 
she saw the gleam of tent-lights, heard the hum 
of challenged sentinels, saw a stately banner 
waving from an illuminated centre, and marked 
dark figures of men and horses etched against 
the brightness and gleam of lights not far away. 

" She moderated her horse's pace with precau- 
tion, and made straight for the tent which bore 
the flag. Soon, challenged by a sentinel, she told 
her errand, and was conducted to the superior 
officer, the Marquis de St. Aldegonde. 

" ' I have been sent by the ladies of Mont 
Blazon to ask for succor. A sure spy reports to 
them that the rebels of the Fronde intend to as- 
sail the chateau by to-morrow's dawn.' 

" ' When did you leave the chS,teau, my boy ? ' 

" ' But a little more than an hour since, mon 
colonel,^ smiled the flushed and dusty groom. 

" * You have done well, and given us good 
time to do as your mistress desires. Ho ! De 



UNA REPLICA. 89 

Neuville, there, take a troop of thirty horse, see 
that you look well to your pistols, and accompany 
this lad to Mont Blazon, against which an early 
attack is preparing by the rebels.' 

" A few minutes after, a compact body of horse- 
men wheeled in the moonlight, saluting their 
colonel, the rays sparkling from hilt and helmet, 
and lighting up the handsome face of their young 
leader, delighted to find himself chosen for the 
adventure. 

" One might have said, as a faint lambency 
played upon his features, that he felt stirring 
within him something more than a hint of mili- 
tary fame ; a secret intimation, perhaps, which, 
better than the moonlight, guided him along a 
path which he felt he loved to tread. He kept 
the little groom by his side, and, joyous with ex- 
citement, chatted familiarly with him. 

" He also wished for what the groom could tell 
him of the approaches to the place, the nature 
of its defences, and of any covert there might be 
near the chateau. 

" The troop of horse rode at a moderate pace, 
their leader wishing to keep his men and horses 
fresh, and fearing that the gallop of a numerous 
body might reach the ear of some wakeful insur- 



90 . CHEQUER-WORK. 

gent. The moon, friendly and smiling, threw 
their shadows before them, as if pointing the way. 

" They were shortened now somewhat, and the 
clear, ascended moon unrolled, as on a map, with 
exactness, each incline of ground and every rock 
and bush. 

" ' That is a good horse, my boy, they have 
given you from your master's stables. He is as 
fresh as my own, and yet he to-night has done 
his four leagues already.' 

" The groom touched his cap with a saucy smile. 
' Diomed never tires, least of all when he thinks 
the life of Gabrielle to be in danger.' 

" ' And who is Gabrielle, and why should he 
love her ? ' 

" ' Gabrielle is the youngest daughter of her 
father, and when he is away, he permits her to 
be the mistress of Diomed.' " 

As my hostess narrated with increasing anima- 
tion the adventure of her ancestress, she cap- 
tivated my attention and at the same time 
distracted it. For while the incidents seemed 
familiar to me, parts of a past which had long 
haunted me, my vision was clothed with living 
realities. 

The two Gabrielles fused together, and here 



UNA REPLICA. 91 

before me was my long day-dream, — Gabrielle of 
the picture assuming a material shape and draw- 
ing me with a vital magnetism. I felt that if it 
be true that we are but the stuff inherited from 
those gone before us, the living Gabrielle might 
well be a duplicate of her progenitor. She had 
the same frank and fearless regard, the same 
courage, the same longing for adventure. As 
she spoke, the present Gabrielle seemed to be liv- 
ing once more the story she narrated. Her 
familiarity with it and resemblance of character 
identified, united the two. 

And thus I was perplexed with a narrative 
which seemed to come from afar, to be almost a 
part of myself, and an action and a voice making 
me share in the life of the Fronde, and that life a 
part and parcel of our own time. 

While listening to this story of the past I yet 
was made conscious of the stirring of new emo- 
tions which belonged only to the life about me. 

My young friend could not but notice the wrapt 
and absorbed manner with which I listened, and 
credited it to the picturesque tale she was telling. 

" I see, you like it," she said, pausing to look 
up with a frank joy in her dark-blue eyes. " Is 
it not splendid thus to be able to doff the weeds 



92 CHEQUER-WORK. 

of our sex, and through courage make a "woman 
as helpful to those she loves as a man could be. 
Oh ! how I envy her her opportunity and the 
high recompense, as you shall hear, it won for her. 
She was indeed a heroine ; but what now can we 
poor creatures do, slaves of a fashion we despise, 
and, dreaming over our embroidery frames, only 
imagine a life which she made a reality." 

" Alas ! " I replied, " days of quiet are not in- 
vaded now, as then, by the tumult of war and risk 
of life, but is there not something of poetry, some- 
thing almost of adventure, in the very fact of my 
being here to hear told from your lips the ro- 
mance of my life, and wonder at the magic which 
brings before me a presence, a form, a face to 
which I have long been vowed, but of which I 
never fancied that earth could furnish the coun- 
terpart." 

Visibly troubled, Gabrielle, with a start, half 
rose from her seat, saying reproachfully, " Are 
you mocking me, sir, with an ill-timed gallantry, 
and are you speaking to me as if I were a part of 
that dream in which you say you indulged, — an 
utter stranger for whom you should have more 
consideration and respect." 

" No stranger indeed," I cried, warmly, " for, if 



UNA REPLICA. 93 

such I seem to you, such you are not, I feel, to 
me, and, as my excuse, hear me tell how I came 
to think I know you and to talk to you as if I 
thought you knew it also. I should have ex- 
plained all this before, but silence held me spell- 
bound, wishing to find how much there was in 
common between my reveries and the heroism of 
your ancestress. If I had spoken earlier, the 
spell might have broken, and so I should have 
lost all." 

" You know," I said, " I am an American, a 
country whose whole life is of the hour, with a 
glorious future, but no past. There are not with 
us mouldering castles, cathedrals, where the 
very religion of the past seems built into the 
stones, no histories of crusade or tournament, no 
queenly ch§,telaines from whose eyes rains influ- 
ence to noble deeds : for these we must turn to 
Europe, and do so often. Europe is our play- 
ground, our school, our novel. Caught in the 
mechanism of our material life, she is to us as a 
poem after prose. We read your histories and 
we dream over your past, especially times unlike 
our own ; strange habits and stranger speech, cos- 
tumes which live only now upon the theatre, fire 
our imagination and dance before us as in elfin 



94 CHEQUER-WORK. 

light. The portrait you have lost, the portrait of 
our heroine by Nattier, in her blue tunic and gar- ' 
landed with roses, wafted by I know not what 
destiny, reached our shores, and I know it well. 
There was always about it something I could not 
explain ; for in addition to its visible charm there 
seemed a prophecy hidden in it. It would not 
keep its place with other relics of the dusty past, 
but beamed upon me as a present acquaintance 
or harbinger of one to whom it would lead me. 
Its look, so direct and courageous, mesmerized 
me. It was hung in the dining-room of a friend, 
and often its witchery would carry me away from 
the laughter and conversation around. 

" I felt myself a shadow in the moonlight, swiftly 
flying, with my companion, across great wastes 
illuminated only by two mysterious eyes, the 
shining moon, and at the horizon the sullen flare 
of burning households. My reverie was so pro- 
found that my friends often twitted my absent- 
mindedness. They predicted that its influence 
would draw me from home, seeking for I know 
not what, the fool of the eye and an imagination 
too womanish to be controlled. But I knew 
better, or rather I instinctively felt — for I did 
not know — that I might trust a guidance I could 



UNA EEPLICA. 95 

not understand. I carried a hope, an affection, in 
my heart, of which I have said nothing to any one. 
Guardian spirits do such things as this. They 
sometimes shape to desired ends the life which 
is trusted to them. The miracle of faith brings 
together the distant and the near. Not moun- 
tains only can it remove, but it can overleap seas, 
rivers and all obstacles, and fetch one to the 
goal of his desire. This is my life which I am 
now living, — till now I have been seeking for it, 
— and I entreat you tell to me, the one who best 
has the right to hear it, the farther details of the 
picturesque journey of your namesake in which we 
both have a common interest. Give it me slowly, 
that I may at the same time once more feel my- 
self riding at her side, and at the same time, 
through you, listen to her voice." 

Gabrielle's eyes opened wide in astonishment ; 
a look of perplexity, even alarm, presently settled 
into one of timidity and grave awe. As strange 
as were the things I said, imperative as had been 
my manner, she could not but feel the genuineness 
of it ; that I had no choice, but must say it. And 
with a submission as if it were fatidique, a neces- 
sity of fate, she accepted the situation. What it 
might all mean she scarcely guessed, but the 



96 CHEQUEE-WOEK. 

romance, the courage inherited from her ances- 
tress, perhaps, inade it not unpleasing to her. 
Here at least was something not commonplace, 
and here was one quite a stranger drawing near 
to her through the common appreciation both had 
of her brilliant relative. 

Again Gabrielle resumed her narrative. " An 
hour before dawn, the troop had reached the vicin- 
ity of the chateau, and in the shadow of a small 
wood their commander bade them halt, while he 
and the little groom explored the approaches to the 
chateau with caution. All was apparently quiet 
in the house, though one lamp burned at a high 
window still, and my ancestress knew that it 
meant that the household, alert and anxious, sleep- 
less but hopeful, were withdrawn from the lower 
rooms, the better to watch any thing moving be- 
neath. As the little groom pointed it out, a stifled 
hum, a vague and uncertain murmur, rose from 
a point nearly opposite to the place in which 
they were. And presently an irregular mass of 
figures, armed for the most part with the weapons 
which a farm furnishes, were in movement toward 
the chateau. Their leader appeared without dis- 
tinction, and in the ordinary peasant's garb ; but 
beside him were two figures of more pretension, 



UNA BEPLICA. • 97 

dressed in the faded frippery of Paris, emis- 
saries, they doubted not, of the hostile leaders 
nearer the capital. ' We are just in time, my 
child,' said the officer, ' but we must let them get 
nearer, that their purpose may be declared and 
their punishment more severe.' Though the irreg- 
ular mass of men kept well together, and tried to 
suppress noise of voice or arms, yet several, run- 
ning ahead, scaled the garden wall, and swarmed 
across the garden. They paid small respect to 
the flowers, tearing and trampling them on their 
way to examine what entrance to the house they 
had best attempt. 

" The massive front door looked too secure, and 
they raced round the chateau to find some postern 
or office gate which might admit them. In the 
mean time those within had evidently noticed the 
approach of their invaders, for lights began to 
move from window to window, and sounds indi- 
cating the moving of heavy objects to bar an 
entrance, and at times the low cry of women's 
voices told the attentive listeners that it was so. 
Making a silent sign to his guide to withdraw, 
the young officer soon rejoined his troop, and 
after conferring in a low voice with his men, told 
him to show them the shortest way to the lawn 
7 



98 CHEQUER-WORK. 

before the garden, where, in disorderly groups 
and with more unrestrained tumult than before, 
the great body of the assailants were gathered. 
The moon had not long since bade them good-bye, 
but the dawn to replace her was already steal- 
ing in rosy fret-work above the horizon, and 
giving, without her brilliancy, a more definite 
look to things. Just as their scouts had re- 
turned to' say that they had found an easy 
entrance possible to the chfi-teau, by removing the 
rusty iron bars of what might be the kitchen or 
scullery, a certain movement of terror, accom- 
panied with loud outcries, and the sudden facing 
of the turbulent crowd towards the wood, was 
shown. With heads bent low, their sabres all in 
a line, their leader well in front, with the little 
groom still riding by his side, the troop, till now 
hidden by the shadow of the trees, fell like a 
thunder-bolt upon their foe. In vain did the gay 
emissaries of Paris try to delay, by a charge of 
their own, the panic-stricken crowd. With yells 
and imprecations they fled on all sides. And 
when the troop had reached a spot where they 
had just been, except a few who had fallen in 
their flight, entangled with each other, there was 
a clear space all around it. A few prisoners were 



UNA REPLICA. 99 

taken, a few peasants were cut to pieces, a few 
shots were fired, and all was over. The earth 
seemed to have swallowed up these children of 
the night, these wretches more willing to rob 
than to fight, while not a single soldier was 
wounded. 

" You maj imagine with what a double wel- 
come the rejoicing sun and their gallant defenders 
were received by the anxious ladies of Mont 
Blazon, and the cowering valletaille of lackeys. 

" The ladies of the house had no difficulty in 
persuading the merry officers of the troop to stay 
to breakfast, which was better by much than that 
of most besieged garrisons, while, under the charge 
of the sommelier, the rest of the troop caroused 
below stairs, praising the petit vin of the district, 
and doing ample justice to the more ignoble parts 
of a wild boar whose hure and haunches deco- 
rated the table of their masters. 

" Eagerly, with that French grace which does 
such things so well, did the ladies of the chateau 
express their acknowledgments and gratitude. 

" Reaction from distress brought to all the high- 
est spirits, and when with an obsequious bow the 
servant announced that breakfast was served, 
no house in all France could have seen a more 



100 CHEQUER-WORK. 

joyous and enjoyed repast than that which fol- 
lowed. 

" Young De Neuville toasted the king and the 
good cause with flashing eyes, and tossed into the 
air his sparkling hon mots and pleasant repartees 
for a while ; but soon a look of earnestness and 
feeling replaced that of mere gayety, and his voice 
was lowered to whispers of intimate confidence 
in the ear of the young chatelaine who sat-next 
to him. Something near yet distant, something 
familiar yet mysterious, piqued his curiosity. 
Meanwhile all looked on with a smile. Stum- 
bling, as it were, over the clew of his memories, 
interrupted by a sudden gaze into the face of his 
lovely neighbor, he started to his feet, wineglass 
in hand, exclaiming, 'I fear we have all for- 
gotten the hero of the occasion, if I may so 
venture to remind you of the little lad, through 
whom I have made acquaintance with this goodly 
company.' With a blush the young lady at his 
side rose also, and, courtesying gracefully, said, 
' I will soon fetch him.' 

" De Neuville watched her with surprise, when, 
gliding towards the door, she turned, and with 
her hand lifted to her temples, and a saucy 
movement of her body, ' Diomed never tires. 



UNA EEPLICA. 101 

least of all when he thinks Gabrielle to be in 
danger,' she said. 

" ' Good Heavens/ cried De Neuville, ' and so 
my little guide is Gabrielle too ! and indeed she 
need have had faith in Diomed in those perilous 
ways last night.' Not to prolong my tale farther, 
I need only say, that many were the visits after 
this which De Neuville, while stationed so near, 
found means to make to the chateau. And the 
acquaintance so picturesquely begun never lost 
its savor. However, to their mutual despair, 
De Neuville followed the great Condd to his 
battles and sieges in Flanders, but before long 
Gabrielle and her mother were sent for by him, 
and, well pleased with the story, the king prom- 
ised his presence at their marriage. While with 
one hand he placed a necklace of pearls upon the 
snowy neck of the bride, with the other he handed 
a missive with the great seal attached, which ap- 
pointed the gallant bridegroom to the command 
of a Division with the title of Marquis." 

So completely, in telling it, had the young girl 
identified herself with her narrative, that she 
seemed truly the heroine she depicted, and the 
fluctuation of personality which confused her 
ancestress with the little groom extended farther, 



102 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

till Gabrielle seemed made of them both. It 
was, indeed, my dream rounded and made com- 
plete ; all that I had fancied of that strange ride 
past burning villages, under the moon, to some 
distant help had proved itself a reality, and as I 
gazed fascinated and enamoured into those flash- 
ing and fearless eyes, a great hope leaped in my 
breast, that the continuation might liave an issue 
in accordance with the termination of her story. 
It was more than hope, it was a fatality that we 
must love each other. I felt that for this the 
augury of so much preparation had been fur- 
nished. It weighed upon me like a pleasant con- 
viction that it must be so, and there was something 
in my acknowledgment and gratitude for her com- 
pliance with my' desire, something so passionate 
and intense, that I saw it penetrated all Gabrielle' s 
being, and prepared her for a submission which, 
without this element of fatality, I could hardly 
have hoped for. We were both silent, and 
while- I felt unequal to disturb the impression 
by additional words, I saw that she too was mus- 
ing with a far-off look in her dreamy eyes, as if 
also compelled to muteness. And so we sepa- 
rated. Her mother seemed to notice, when we 
had joined the others, a certain change in her, 



UNA EEPLICA. 103 

but wliat it was she could not explain to herself ; 
and so we mixed in the conversation and mirth 
of the fireside circle, taking our share in the 
anecdote and persiflage which was circulating, 
yet all the while drawn apart from the rest by 
ties invisible to them, and but the stronger for 
this repression of our mutual feeling. And so 
it went on for a few days, I longing for and 
awaiting that inevitable moment when I should 
feel the impulse which must break the chains of 
silence, and ease my heart by full revelation. 
And it came as if sent but not sought for, unex- 
pected by both of us, yet as if it were the most 
natural thing in the world. After a game of 
lawn tennis, which was played on the lawn be- 
fore the garden where, many centuries before, 
the foul mob of the Jacquerie had stained the 
moonlight with their presence, while the elder 
members of the family, pleading fatigue, withdrew 
to the house, Gabrielle, with a sudden impulse, 
asked to show me, in a little dell not far away, a 
cluster of natural flowers which her botanical 
studies had made her to understand as also exist- 
ing in America. I had never seen such before, 
and doubted if they belonged to my country, but 
she assured me they did, or something very like 



104 CHEQUER-WORK. 

them, in the wild mountainous passes of Colorado. 
"And do you think," I said, "that if you were 
there you could find the fellow for these lovely 
creatures here ? Do you tliink there is enough 
in common between your beautiful France and 
those rude scenes for them to exist there, — a 
bond between our two countries, as there will 
ever be hereafter between you and me." She 
trembled a little, but with firm eyes looking into 
mine, she said, " I also feel the bond, and somehow 
that we have somewhere a common country." 
Then I told her that I had but lately had from 
my father a letter urging my return to take 
charge of a certain large purchase he had made 
in Colorado. I described to her with enthusiasm 
the delightful things I had heard of that region : 
the elastic purity of its air, the great mountains 
clothed with virgin forests, as yet little violated 
by the settler's axe, and in whose breast run 
great veins of gold and silver, while on its ver- 
dant sides herds of lordly cattle browse amid 
nodding flowers, among which she might find the 
cousins of those we looked upon, while over all, 
wheeling in the transparent blue, the sun sent 
health and happiness into the hearts of all who 
come there. 



I 



UNA EEPLICA. 105 

I spoke to her of the lovely pastoral life, the 
sweet simplicity of living, the excitement which 
brought every day a fresh adventure where cour- 
age and intrepidity were needed at every turn, yet 
where there was little absolute danger. I told 
her of the helpfulness of men to each other, 
where help must be so needed by all, and of the 
choice and superior spirits which flocked thither 
from England and the cities of our Atlantic 
coast, — men of culture and refinement as well 
as enterprise. 

As I spoke she listened with flashing eyes, 
drawing herself up to her full height, and in her 
glance shone unmistakably the audacity and fire 
of her favorite ancestress. She made me repeat 
every particular I had heard, and I fear had even 
invented, of a life which seemed to her full of 
attractions. On this hint I spoke. I told her in 
glowing words how for long years, when she had 
seemed to me only an unsubstantial vision of the 
air, something like a lode-star had drawn me to 
her house ; how I had sought her enveloped in a 
cloud of tender predictions ; how these monitions 
but pointed to our mutual happiness ; and I whis- 
pered sweet tales which had come floating down 
the stream of time, of lovers plighted and blest 



106 CHEQUER-WORK. 

by unseen hands, of guardian spirits divinely per- 
mitted to mix in the affairs of men by selections 
which justify their coming, to prove that, some- 
times at least, marriages are made in heaven. As 
I spoke, the meek submissiveness and awe which 
extinguished the fire burning in her dark-blue 
eyes was replaced by a look of surprised fond- 
ness and trust, caught from the contagion of my 
unflinching faith ; she turned aside awhile shyly, 
and then lightly placing her hand upon my arm, 
with the frankest laugh and the steadiest gaze, 
she said, simply, " And if you have had your 
dream, have I not also had mine ? If you saw 
me, through my ancestress, chasing the moon 
across wild and trackless plains, have I not seen 
myself, as you spoke, a visitor to your country 
in the strangest attire, with a light carbine on 
my shoulder, travelling upward and on, past cata- 
racts which shatter themselves to spray against 
the rocks, and where the cry of the eagle and 
savage creatures came as an invitation to ascend 
and be of their company ! You have painted for 
me the very life I should desire to lead, spiced with 
danger, embosomed in beauty, hard work to do, 
and a faithful companion by my side. In my 
vision I saw him, but not distinctly ; was it a 



UNA REPLICA. 107 

cheat, and is there no such life ? Must I still 
make my weary round of insipid pleasures and 
still more insipid duties ? Did I see truth in my 
vision, and was that uncertain companion of my 
way no mirage of my desire, but indeed yourself ? " 
She had spoken with light and faithful accents, 
but through the whole ran, like a steel blade 
hidden in a scabbard of jewels, the clear, sharp 
edge of real feeling and desire. 

When she had finished, a wave of maidenly 
emotion rushed into her face, and, lightly with- 
drawing her hand which had been upon my arm, 
with downcast eyes, she drew a little backward, 
while a slight twitch of pain ran along her brow, 
as if she felt that the impulse fo which she yielded 
had carried her too far. But without pausing to 
notice it I passed with all my triumphant hopes, 
all my sympathetic ardor, through the door 
which she had thrown open. I continued her 
picture of a common existence, I painted to her 
my home, my family, the sisters I loved so well, my 
father, whose lightest wish was to me a command, 
my studies, my tastes, the narrative of my past, 
all converging to that future in which I always 
saw her at my side, the appointed sharer of my 
labors and my joys. 



108 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

Enveloped in the magnetism of mj affection, 
she stood placid and content, no thrill of pride or 
wounded maidenhood again recurring, but betray- 
ing, by the peace and trust which swam in her 
speaking eyes, that at last she shared and had her 
full part in that mutual love which seemed rather 
a message to us than any thing we had discovered 
of ourselves. - 

Sometimes events of a startling character, when 
they penetrate a family, find it mute and submis- 
sive. Such was the case now ; and our mutual 
affection was received as something too odd to 
be fought against ; and it might be hoped that 
it would be authorized by that heaven which 
makes matches and looks after such infatuated 
people. I found to'" my satisfaction that I had 
made myself a general favorite without trying to 
do so ; for I contrived no little plots to capture 
their good-will, displayed little of the dangerous 
polish of a facile politeness, but, by my directness 
and good nature I had won upon them easily. 

I even found that the old cousin, who lived al- 
most within the quarterings which meant to her 
so much, confessed that she approved of me. So, 
after a formal avowal of our engagement, and 
one or two dinners at neighboring chateaux in 



UNA REPLICA. 109 

recognition of it, we were allowed a country free- 
dom which was an extension of the ordinary- 
privilege of lovers in France. 

Our wedding was joyous, and the theme of no- 
tice even in the county paper ; a famous Amer- 
ican general, then on his travels, appeared at 
my authorized invitation, and what he revealed of 
our mutual military life helped me with a people 
believing in war and admirers of valor. 



Unfortunately the narrative came to a sudden 
close here. We would have liked to have heard 
more, and what the lovers enjoyed or endured in 
their rude life in Colorado ; but the lady, touching 
lightly, with her own, her husband's hand said : 
" That will do, dear, you have told quite enough ; 
for our friends here can guess, without our help, 
our life in America, with which perhaps they are 
better acquainted even than we. Besides, you see 
the moon has again hidden herself, and no longer 
commands us to enlarge upon our adventures." 




IV. 

MAY A MONKEY POSSESS GENIUS 1 



IV. 

MAY A MONKEY POSSESS GENIUS 1 



TV /TE. DARWIN has given us a sketch of what 
he considers, from his idea of man's pos- 
sible development from a simian original, to be 
the source of our moral and social sentiments. 
Like all that he writes, it is more than interest- 
ing ; it takes hold of the root of things, the very 
basis of life and being. He- shows us how the 
present mind of man is a conquest from chaos. 
Little by little, among a group of individuals, 
sprang up the mutual surrender of selfishness, 
the fierce greed of possession, with an adjust- 
ment for a common advantage. This surrender, 
found more profitable than dispute, wrote for 
itself a code of laws in the word " human rights," 
and so began in the world. The delayed brain 
of the infant found itself the centre everywhere 
8 



114 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

of a group where the word " affection " took 
the place of this word " rights." 

The relation between individuals through affec- 
tion branched and flowered into many forms of 
sentiment, enriching the social relation. The 
tyranny of love was softened by a poetry which 
stripped it of its brutality. This most personal 
of human passions crowned itself with an unself- 
ishness which finally made the distinguishing 
feature of the days of chivalry. A physical ter- 
ror, alarmed at insecurity in a world of phenom- 
ena it could not understand; and an inferred 
author, not only of blessings, but of dangers on 
every hand to be averted, possibly by propitia- 
tion and sacrifice, — made for man a religion. 
From these beginnings grew the world we know. 
Every day saw their expansion by use, and the 
enjoyment of an intercourse thus made both prof- 
itable and pleasant. 

But from the pre-historic group of men and 
women first formed into the family and society 
by these conditions to the world's present devel- 
opment of the rights of all, the courtesy of social 
intercourse, and an intelligent apprehension of 
the laws of the Divine Governor, what a stride ! 
It is difficult enough to understand how a famil- 



MAY A MONKEY POSSESS GENIUS ? 115 

iarity with and practice of these ideas should 
carry man so far. 

He alone, of all the creatures about him, has 
got the brain to accomplish so much. The other 
animals had the same start as he. And we notice 
that their faculties, though less, are like ours. 
Some are social ; they have the family sentiment, 
and, for all we know, the sentiment of religion. 
Yet man escaped from the crowd, and not only 
showed to the rest the way of progress they 
could not use, but found himself looking down 
from a height of sovereignty which none could 
dispute. 

mysterious and fortunate anthropoid ape, 
whence got you this advantage over your fellows ? 
With no help from any, the world around you a 
scene of violence, quarrel, and ignorance, how 
made you that first step which has proved an 
entrance upon a path ever widening upward to 
the realms of light ? And why is it that the 
brain of all these creatures feels no pang of 
jealousy, no desire of imitation, no enmity to 
that superiority which so differentiates man 
from his animal companions. 

Dear Mr. Darwin, we are thy pupils, and how 
this is, we would gladly learn of thee. 



116 CHEQUER-WORK. 

Tliat the brain of an animal should develop 
extravagances, and, making an eccentric de- 
parture from the common level, reach abnormal 
heights, like disarranged machinery, we may- 
imagine. We may even admit that a monkey 
may have genius ; for there is something in them 
at times so sudden and unexpected, that it al- 
most seems that their brain might succeed in 
reaching superiority. When playful, in fun and 
mischief, or when sunk in contemplation, they 
reach those confines of thought which, in a mon- 
key, may be called genius. 

But that an anthropoid ape, passing the bounds 
of the monkey's brain, should find itself in a true 
relation to the world of observation and thought, 
it is hard to conceive. That such a brain should 
compass the world and subdue it, analyze its 
materials, and, leaving earth, justly compute plan- 
etary distances, predict eclipses, and thus intel- 
ligently track and apprehend the laws of the 
universe, is yet more inconceivable. 

Nor does the mental action which enables 
man to do this come through accident or effort. 
There is nothing in it abnormal to the mind's 
natural function. And when a Newton, a Shake- 
speare, is born into the world, he surpasses 



MAY A MONKEY POSSESS GENIUS? 117 

his fellows, but is not a stranger among tliem. 
He is not separated from, but united to, all. If 
our brains have not an inventive or creative 
power equal to his, he is still intelligible to us, 
and from his height draws us all up to a 
brighter level of knowledge. It is in vain, there- 
fore, that scientists and anatomists display before 
us the complete correspondence in all important 
particulars between the osteology of man and any 
monkey. The carpentry is the same, if you will. 
The skull of an ape may be as capacious as that 
of some of the inferior races of men, but the 
part of Hamlet is left out in the inward drama. 
It is the divine something which follows so close 
the scientific, artistic method of the Creator 
which makes man the " paragon of animals," 
and " in apprehension how like a god ! " If the 
germ of man's powers lay unfolded and hidden 
in the convolutions of a simian brain, then was 
the creation of such a brain equivalent to the 
creation of man. 

While the world owes to Mr. Darwin the 
completest statement of its laws of development 
through the struggle for life and by natural selec- 
tion, and which science tells us is day by day 
made more secure and impregnable, there is a 



118 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

silent dissent in the soul of man to this law when 
it includes himself. 

Not only does it abase his dignity by a fellow- 
ship where he was lord over all, but a kinship 
which he had not discovered until now. These 
poor relations had never before knocked at man's 
door with any such pretence of brotherhood. Nor 
do they yet. It is only we ourselves who have 
established metaphysically a tie of blood which 
we may repudiate if the inconveniences of this 
belief should reach the mind of the animal crea- 
tion. It then might be with us as when in Egypt 
flies had even sharpened their present obscene 
familiarity, and frogs and toads made themselves 
at home in the palaces of kings. We can afford 
for the sake of the pride of science to stoop to a 
humiliation which cannot be abused. Along the 
chain which binds us to the life around, no mag- 
netic, no electric whisper runs to tell these many 
creatures of their long-lost brother. The silence 
is ominous of doubt somewhere. That we all 
have a common Father has long been known and 
felt, but this equality of blood relationship, if the 
animals knew it, would be as awkward for them 
as it is certainly startling to ourselves. 

There is something in the nature of man's in- 



MAY A MONKEY POSSESS GENIUS ? 119 

telligence which is unlike a pcfwer, keeping itself 
at a height not native to it, and fed from with- 
out, — an accretion from experience and will, 
which is always greater than what it knows and 
a perpetual prediction for his» advance, as is the 
stride into the vast knowledge of the present, 
out of the ignorance of the past. The conflu- 
ence of many streams of thought and activity 
finds man quite at home on every new vantage- 
ground. He moves abreast with it all, and is 
ready to move still farther onward and upward. 

There is something native to his nature which 
cannot be daunted by any difiiculty, mental or 
physical. The more he attains, the greater height 
he reaches, the more he is at home. The winged 
spirit seems only clogged by earth's atmosphere, 
and made for celestial spaces and the transpar- 
ency of ether. 

Is the instinct which at once believes this a 
deception ? and is it only the image his self-com- 
placency throws upon the heavens ? Is earth and 
no unguessed and unseen side of it to be still 
the only theatre for liis spiritual as well as physi- 
cal being ? 

Shut within its forty miles of atmosphere, un- 
known tracts between it and any sister planet, 



120 CHEQUER-WORK. 

earth might seem sufficient to itself, and that all 
existence must find here its boundarj. 

But the feu follet within us is discontented 
with this limit and dreams of flights into the uni- 
verse beyond. It* already measures the courses 
of the stars and analyzes their materials. Is it 
nevet, by a more direct intercourse, to add to tliis 
knowledge ? 

It would seem a new hunger of Tantalus if 
man saw this celestial fruit hanging above his 
head only to mock him with an impotent desire 
for possession. 

Where he has already won so much from the 
universe, so extended himself through space, his 
grandest hopes and claims may yet prove the 
safest belief. He feels such serenity of content, 
such certainty of his royalty, that he can play 
with the theories which seem to diminish them, 
and masquerade as a monkey's offspring, when 
he knows that he is the child of God. 

Or do these new theories point to the true 
method of a Fashioner of all things, and reach 
the goal of man's hopes but through a longer 
circuit ? It may be something better than the 
personal God of the Jews, careful only of man, 
that we should learn to look upon all living 



MAY A MONKEY POSSESS GENIUS ? 121 

things as his children in the same sense that 
we are. 

Perhaps the best idea man can get of that 
" reversion in the sky " his spirit beheves in, but 
does not understand, may be through one of 
those similitudes, often better than argument, 
and which that most spiritual of material things, 
Photography, can teach him. Perhaps, after all, 
man's low condition may brighten as this bids 
us hope. A photograph of his earthly habita- 
tion, his house in a street, shows, in the photo- 
graphic negative, the dark places, the archway, 
the cornice, even the sewer and the gutter's gar- 
bage, all in light ; but the windows, which are 
the eyes of the house, its sunny front, and the 
aspiring roof, the negative only gives as dark. 
Yet wait and look again : behold the positive 
impression ! In the twinkling of an eye see how 
all is reversed and changed. The sunshine fell 
not in vain upon the carved and soaring front ; 
and the eyes of the house, like the windows of 
the soul, shine with celestial brightness. This 
life may be the negative to Heaven's positive. 

Many critics consider that the new cosmogony 
not only conflicts with Moses, but that it over- 
turns the foundations of the old religion. Cer- 



122 CHEQUEE-WORK. 

tainlj nothing could differ more than man's 
origin as explained by these two authorities. 
But the world is weary of Moses, and his tables 
of stone hang like a weight around its neck. It 
needed a new dispensation, and lo ! the greatest 
miracle-monger. Time, steps to the front. Man 
cannot add a cubit to his stature, but the new 
gospel says, " Live long enough, and try hard 
enough, and you may attain to even more than 
that." 

Time and life, or protoplasm, as its starting- 
point is called, seem to represent here the invis- 
ible Deity. 

Does life obey orders, — or does it wander 
through a maze of forms, accidents of creation, 
like the shapeless creatures of a dream ? The 
Zoological Gardens at London put such ideas 
in one's head when wandering there. Climate, 
chance helps for sustaining life, persistence in the 
same direction, seem to shape the logical formula 
of each creature. 

Each creature is, as it were, moulded by its 
environment. A little brain, enough to guide 
to food, the wit to secure it, and these whimsi- 
cal figures, imprisoned in an unconscious person- 
ality, walk, wade, or swim with the confidence of 



MAY A MONKEY POSSESS GENIUS? 123 

beings whose antitype, enduring for ever, is the 
creative thought of God. Like the hour-hand of 
a clock, though we do not see them move, yet 
they fluctuate, cross, and dissolve each round its 
centre with the mobility of smoke. Only, for this, 
time enough must be granted. And the theory, 
in Bible words, says for itself, " A thousand years 
are as a day." ' 

And mind itself gets a new look as we con- 
template the world through the eyes of the sci- 
ence of the present. It also fluctuates and 
changes with circumstances. It has no absolute 
outline, but can inform a particle of dust or a 
seraph with a supply according to the individual 
need. Form and brain seem a kind of driving 
power, as of a caloric engine, attached to the 
machinery as more or less power is demanded. 
Every thing looks, as we muse through the grav- 
elled walks of this Zoological garden at London, 
where, as in ^ the ark, all creatures are gathered^ 
dissolving, illusory, uncertain. If the world has 
so many shapes of living things, so many ani- 
mals, why should it not have ten or fifty times as 
many ? And science answers, " And so it might, 
but for the struggle for life, and the limitations of 
food." Yet we can fancy other worlds where 



124 CHEQUER-WORK. 

forms impossible to this exist under new condi- 
tions, so weird, so strange, so impossible, that to 
us they would look like a madman's dream. And 
ever, like a star, a suitable intelligence burns above 
their brows. Always and everywhere the lamp 
of life secretes from somewhere its point of phos- 
phorescence, in whose heart thought, choice, and 
passion sleep. 

And is man also one of these many ? Is he, 
his brain, his heart, his conscience, only the crest 
of that moving wave of being to which earth 
has given shape, and which loses itself in that 
great sea we call eternity, and into which pour 
millions of other waves, holding existences 
moulded from their environment, the shaping 
forces of countless worlds ? 

Certainly this vision of God's method with his 
creatures would disturb the equanimity of the 
fathers. They would have found themselves lost 
in such wastes of time, in such a sea of being. 
Their church was snug, narrow, personal. It 
loved not the tyranny of law, but rather a law- 
giver who astonished and delighted its vanity 
by violation of law. The father, turned juggler 
to win the attention of, and delight with surprises, 
his curious children, as the family gathered about 



MAY A MONKEY POSSESS GENIUS ? 125 

the evening fire, was not unlike their notion of 
the Heavenly Father. 

He accompanies us, the race of man, on our 
march through time. And the morning sun 
throws upon cloud-land the gigantic projection 
of ourselves as we move upon the journey which 
the noon of clear knowledge shall make to dis- 
appear. 

At one extremity we have the poor brain of 
the Hottentot, and at the other the van of men 
is led by genius. And what is this leader of 
men, — this acknowledged king of the world ? 
No one knows. Descent through blood, a per- 
fect body, fortunate circumstances, help little to 
explain it. Like the wind, "it bloweth where it 
listeth ; " whence it comes and whither it goes no 
one can tell. At one time genius seems a dis- 
ease ; at another, the mind's perfect health. 

It is not often long-lived, though, when most 
genuine, sometimes is so. Is it a flame which 
the body's combustion makes to flare and flicker, 
while souls of lesser draught look on, hoping to 
catch some of the heat ? Is it all phosphorus, a 
will-o'-the-wisp, an ignis fatuus ? or is it heaven's 
pure light, sent by Divine transmission, a pharos 
for mankind ? Is it, as men of old have thought, 



126 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

inspired ? and do spirits quicken man's brain by 
their illumination ? 

Whatever it may be, as we look back upon the 
long line of men emerging from the darkness, 
at intervals we see a genius like a torch lifted 
high to guide the purblind crowd. This genius 
seems to come from above man's nature, and not 
to rise fountain-like from its depths. It seems 
to speak of another kinship than the apes, and 
this has made man, through neither vanity nor 
pride, look shyly skyward for his kindred. 

The soul has more affinity with the citizens of 
the heavenly city than it can with any earthly 
parentage. Like men to whom fortune gives 
much, and promises still more, ashamed of their 
uncomely parent of the village, so are we slow 
to acknowledge or embrace this somewhat dis- 
creditable progenitor. But perhaps we do not 
know ourselves, and only put on all the tinsel of 
poetry and the scarlet of brilliant thoughts when 
watched by the crowd on holidays, yet all the 
while the monkey, with his impudence, ignorance, 
and vulgar fun, hides beneath this display. 

I knew once a lady who trembled with anger 
as well as disgust at the sight of the pathetic 
splendor and suggestive gestures of a little mon- 



MAY A MONKEY POSSESS GENIUS ? 127 

key which an Italian made to dance. She could 
not bear it. This least respectable, most offen- 
sive relative she felt in her heart was there to 
mock her humanity and insult its pride. And 
is sin but a monkey trick? and is the monkey 
nearer the truth than we, making light of it, and 
allowing no moralist to defeat him of the gayety 
it brings ? 

But there is your serious monkey. The Chim- 
panzee, and other kinds, have a gravity at times 
which we have only seen equalled upon the face 
of an old negro. These " Uncle Toms " of the 
forest have the air of being really touched by 
what man's soul considers its proudest posses- 
sion, — its melancholy. They also look as if 
they found the world not good enough for them. 
Probably they also consider this divine sorrow 
unites them to a better world and proves their 
immortality. Perhaps also it may be sometimes 
induced by envy of the superior wisdom and 
ability of the tall clothed monkeys they see 
moving about them in such numbers. But to be 
understood, a Chimpanzee should be seen when 
near his death ; and his weekly bills of mortality, 
as with us, place consumption at the head of the 
list. He should be seen in his little dying bed, 



128 CHEQUER-WORK. 

with his guardian nurse, and the vials on the 
shelf. It makes one ache to watch his poor, 
pathetic face, to hear the struggle of his laboring 
chest, to see his long thin fingers draw up the 
blanket about his shivering shoulders with the 
twitch, which at once transforms him from a 
perishing beast to a dying— but immortal — 
creature. 

The idea of an animal's brain being visited by 
so strange an occupant as genius looks rather 
jocular than reasonable. They know excite- 
ment ; they have in their degree the affections, 
the passions, and, we might say, at times the 
reasoning power of men. But intellectual ac- 
tivity, carried to the creative and artistic stage, 
we are not familiar with. And yet birds and 
beasts, when trained, might tell us a different 
story. Unfortunately, the method of training, 
and how much is due to routine, appetite, or 
mechanical sequence, but not to attention and 
thought, the trainer has not told us. During life 
he kept his secret for his own advantage, and it 
died with him. But the books which tell us of 
animals have stories of them, whether wild or 
tame, which surprise us with a resemblance to 
ourselves ; and what else could we fairly expect ? 



MA.Y A MONKEY POSSESS GENIUS ? 129 

The economy of the universe, as well as the 
grand simplicity at its centre, makes it unlikely 
that there should be duplicates of any thing. 
There can be but one sort of thinking, feeling, 
loving, or hating. An animal may have an infin- 
itesimal portion of either of these, but it must be 
in essence the same as with man. Naturalists 
now generally recognize this, and the view is 
friendly to Mr. Darwin's theory. It also suits 
well the notion of Swedenborg, that heaven is 
like earth duplicated throughout, but more spirit- 
ually fine. Most reasonably is the Society for 
the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals becoming a 
power, and paying our debt to the animals so long 
our allies, powerless to speak for themselves, and 
whose accusing eyes in another world we would 
not like to behold. 

That Garden of Eden, where the newly created 
pair lived in such friendly intimacy with the 
lower creation, may prove only a truth out of 
place. It has got shuffled to the beginning of 
man's earthly sojourn, when perhaps it will be 
found at the end. 

The new love we feel for our humble depend- 
ants cannot long go undiscovered by them. 
Perhaps through all tlieir tribes it is telegraphed 



130 CHEQUER-WORK. 

already. And if they do not in their progress 
overtake the speech of man, man, as his nerves 
refine, may acquire the mystery of their electric 
intercourse, swifter than speech, and perhaps 
better. And so we may come together in the 
new Eden and find a paradise regained. 

Everybody in his time has tried to define 
genius ; but I fear it escapes definition. Men also 
have tried to find the causes of it, but it defies 
them. They see Prosper©, and revere his wis- 
dom ; but they cannot snare the unseen Ariel, 
whose laughter mocks them from every side. If 
Shakespeare meant these twain to impersonate 
imagination, it is fit that he should set them 
in such a frame of beauty, a peopled solitude, 
where every thing that lived was bowed to 
them in sweet subjection. Eut genius shows 
itself in other fields which are all unlovely. 

Well may Attila have called liimself the Scourge 
of God. Any metaphor will do which serves to 
describe this process, by which a convulsion, as 
of storm and thunder, clears the air for the 
new generation. And while personally criminal, 
treacherous, selfish, these conquerors feel them- 
selves that they are wielded by an unseen power, 
and have no choice of action. They talk as did 



MAY A MONKEY POSSESS GENIUS ? 131 

Napoleon of his star ; they may profess allegiance 
to Mahomet, or borrow the horns of the Egyptian 
Ammon, as did Alexander, but we see it is still 
the same. Not lightning or thunder are more 
the same always than are these impersonal con- 
querors. When the air is loaded with choking 
vapors, and men stifle under the miasma of 
despotism, a Cromwell, a Napoleon is sent ; but 
when society is young, the air pure, and growth, 
not destruction, needed, an Alfred or a Washing- 
ton is appointed for the work. 

But when genius attaches itself to other or- 
gans beside those of combatireness and destruc- 
tion, it exhibits itself in quite a different manner. 
If it inform Ideality when the nervous system 
is delicate and the digestion bad, it sometimes 
burns itself away in pure spiritual flame. So it 
was with Kirke White and Shelley. Not enough 
attached to earth by completeness and health of 
body, the latter, like his own skylark in the 
heavens, exhaled his life in song. 

When the social relations and the love of 
human nature grow more solidly in a sounder 
body, the dramatic poet is produced. Without 
these advantages, living in the poetic solitude of 
Cumberland, the healthy body of Wordsworth 



132 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

was not enough to give liim dramatic skill. The 
only attempt he made in that direction sufficiently 
proved this. But when this wandering fire of 
the mind finds no avenue of expression for 
itself, no conduit for its energy, it sometimes 
persecutes its possessor by its baffled activity. 
When observing such characters — irregular, spas- 
modic, inconsequent, too often a trouble to them- 
selves and their friends — we are reminded of 
a French game to be found at certain watering- 
places : it is called La toupie Hollandaise. The 
game consists in a smooth surface, bound 
with brass and divided into various compart- 
ments separated from each other by little brass 
railings. Each compartment has one open 
door, and in each pins are placed in various 
positions. Fronting these open doors is a lig- 
num-vitae top, bound with iron, its projecting sum- 
mit let into a slot. A string, which, after being 
wound round the top, passes through the brazen 
rim, is given to the player. By a smart twitch 
the top is sent forward with amazing power. 
For a long time it beats about its metal boundary, 
when suddenly perhaps it will pass through one 
of the open doors. Then it strews on every side 
the pins, and, escaping its imprisonment, runs to 



MAY A MONKEY POSSESS GENIUS ? 133 

and fro, entering many compartments, carrying 
devastation where it enters. And at last, the 
impulse being exhausted, it ceases spinning, falls 
on its side, and with .a whirl expires. In the 
same way the energy of irregular genius traverses 
life, carrying disorder through the compartments 
of the mind, and, after much noise and expec- 
tation will also fall upon its side and die. 

The learned gentlemen who are interested in 
our forest brothers, one would have supposed, 
would have been careful to study the habits of 
thought, the germs of ideas discoverable in any 
of the monkeys to whom we have access. So far 
as I know, nothing of the sort has been done. 
We cannot be made to take the monkey seriously. 
Charmed with his tricks when visiting a menage- 
rie, we love to look out for them ; we love their 
solemn fun, that serious face, which is kept 
not only before his victim, but the spectator. The 
essence of a practical joke is that it should be 
performed behind a mask of gravity. So when 
we see a solemn baboon scratch another monkey's 
head while pretending to scratch his own, or 
some slender, agile monkey swing unexpectedly 
up and down a cage, flicking as he goes by, or 
pulling as if bell-ropes, half a dozen dependent 



134 ' CHEQUER-WORK. 

tails, and then suddenly, with an unconscious air, 
sitting beyond reach of reprisals, wholly given up 
to the extraction of a nut's inside, we fully enter 
into it all. We see that the monkey conceives 
of fun as we do ; that he is an admirable actor, 
and at the proper time can appear unconscious 
of his audience. We greatly admire his humor- 
ous figure, his grotesque attitudes, the sleeping 
mischief of his watchful eye ; but we do not see 
that this acrobat mirrors us, and that when we 
say, " Poor fellow, how serious he looks ! I pity 
him so ! " or when pater familias warns his 
offspring, in the memorable lines of the poet, — 

" The boys about the monkeys' cage 
Had better keep away," — 

it is ourselves the actor is taking off. 

Complacently we feel our superiority ; but we 
do envy him his agility. Certain Japanese jug- 
glers have approached the monkey in this quality. 
But though there is more intelligence in the 
man's tricks, in pure agility the monkey beats 
him hollow. 

Does the crowd which always surrounds the 
monkey cage suppose it is drawn there only 
by its relish of buffoonery? Is it not uncon- 



MAY A MONKEY POSSESS GENIUS ? 135 

sciously sympathizing with them, — seeking for 
the recognition which does not come, waiting for 
that touch of nature which shall establish a closer 
tie between them ? But to be understood I 
suppose the monkey should be studied at home in 
his native forests. . Yet rarely is the philosopher 
found there to profit by his advantage. 

Du Chaillu comes and goes from the equator, 
and brings us stories of the gorilla which at the 
best are half legendary. But has he slept or 
boarded with them ? Did he win their confidence, 
and have they to him whispered their secrets ? 
Has he established that intimacy which Kingsley 
says exists in the West Indies between the negro 
and the monkey ? There of an evening they may 
be seen reeling home together arm-in-arm, — a pair 
of tipsy Souter Johnnys. When he or another 
has done this, we may at last .get beliind the mask, 
and find out if a monkey may have genius. 



^ 



V. 

THE GASHED HELMET. 



V. 

THE GASHED HELMET. 



TT is a dangerous thing to be a spiritualist. 
On the one side it gives to the believer, in 
the world's opinion, an unsavory look of being 
the cheap dupe X)f street legerdemain, and on the 
other side it stimulates spiritual pride to find 
one's self more knowing than one's fellows. With 
all its wonderful promises, spiritualism proves to 
most onlj a blind alley leading nowhere. After 
our hopes are betrayed, we subside into that 
morbid moral helplessness which is the mark of 
our time. 

Every one now is crying in his heart, " They 
have taken away my Lord, and I know not where 
they have laid him." The subtle serpent of sci- 
ence has again tempted men, promising that they 
shall be as gods ; again has man found that the 
fruit of the tree of knowledge, however fair out- 
wardly, is sometimes but ashes within. 



140 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

The geologists are kind enough to allow that, 
with certain limitations and explanations, the 
account of the creation in Genesis is not a bad 
one. With a shudder the whole world is shrink- 
ing from the terrible symbolism of the serpent 
and the tree of knowledge. 

Spiridion Geister was a spiritualist. It is true 
that he had had touched in him that fibre which 
responds to certain phenomena as acutely as the 
nerve of the tooth to the dentist's steel. The 
wonder he had discovered penetrated him, but he 
could not explain it. He was more puzzled than 
he avowed, and felt, as I suppose, a little as Mac- 
beth did when trusting himself to the juggling 
sisters. As the devil has been dead and buried 
now for some time, simple people accept on trust, 
with childish confidence, all statements from be- 
yond the tomb. It is taken for granted that 
if there be spirits, they are only trying to inter- 
view us and explain themselves. That they are 
playing upon us, and thereby are having a fun 
of their own, is but dimly suspected. At any 
rate, we are in their hands, and they can palter 
with us in a sense of their own as long as we put 
ourselves there. 

Now our hero was but poorly adapted for this 



THE GASHED HELMET. 141 

double game. His own hand was overlooked, but 
he could not see what cards his adversary held. 
But if his judgment was poor in this, as in many 
other matters, it was something that it suited 
him, and that for every material interest it took 
away, it substituted a spiritual one. He liked 
the hasheesh, the opium, of the medium's den. 
It was his form of intoxication, and in some way 
or other, it seems, the race must brutalize itself. 
While his curiosity was keen and his nerves fresh, 
he got manifestations which, incredible as they 
seemed, he knew to be true. He locked the treas- 
ure in his heart, and felt prouder for the gain. 
But later the marvel was diminished, as if the 
magicians cared not to show off when familiarity 
had blunted surprise. But, as the display grew 
rarer and feebler, Geister in no degree found his 
faith slacken. He thought he felt the miracle 
diffused everywhere in his life. Sights and sounds 
had for him a meaning undiscoverable by others. 
He noticed, however, that while his earlier stories 
were received with interest, if incredulity, when 
he spoke now, men smiled and turned aside their 
attention. 

Still I remember an odd narrative of his which 
might very well pass for a dream, so reckless 



142 CHEQUER-WORK. 

and unsubstantial it seemed. But as the wildest 
dreams sometimes leave you penetrated with a 
poignant thrill real life has , not furnished, so 
there was about this story a musty flavor of the 
past not without its charm. 

Among other spoils' of travel, Spiridion had, 
when young, brought home from Florence some 
armor. There were a battered antique helmet, 
a dented corselet, pikes and halberds, and a short 
sword whose hilt of elegant openwork spoke of 
the best days of Florence. He had noticed at 
first that the sword had been broken and some- 
what clumsily repaired. But it was not till after 
years of possession that he saw a long scar on 
the outside of the helmet, and just under it, 
within, a piece of iron kept in place by flat nails, 
a sort of plaster of metal to a slightly-gaping 
wound. It was evident that some one had been 
killed while wearing the helmet. No mortal head 
could have withstood that stroke, so powerful that 
an axe, and not a sword, must have been the 
weapon used. 

This discovery fascinated our friend Geister. 
He often attentively examined his helmet, pon- 
dering the possibilities of intercourse with some 
spirit friend who could explain the accident. His 



THE GASHED HELMET. 143 

curiosity but grew the keener from expectancy. 
The desire of a solution of such an unaccounta- 
ble blow took possession of him. More than one 
medium professed to assuage his thirst, but failed. 
The explanations were discordant, improbable, 
unsatisfactory. One spirit said the helm had 
belonged to Dante, and was worn by his secre- 
tary whom he slew in a fit of anger for upsetting 
his inkstand. Another said she saw two figures 
standing beside it : one, whose name was Save- 
naroler, and the other, who was bald, looked like 
Julius Cassar. 

Spiridion, so far from being satisfied with this 
explanation, felt angry and hurt that spirits 
should think such chaff could take him in. He 
thought, if he must have guesses, he liked better 
his own, which at least seemed natural to him, 
rather than these dull blunders from a quarter 
where all things should be known. He had ex- 
amined the helmet so often, lifting the visor, and 
feeling at the little buttons of steel which helped 
to mend the wounded metal, that he thought 
he felt round him the shock of battle, the clash 
of weapons, and all the currents of a heady fight. 
He would start from such a dream by feeling a 
battle-axe come crashing through his forehead, 



144 CHEQUER-WORK. 

only to find the helmet fallen from his knees with 
a bang upon the floor. 

Fortunately at last, house alterations relieved 
him of this besetting nightmare. His trophy had 
been taken down, his Circassian hauberk, his 
Persian scimetar, his Nubian dagger, his Afghan 
shield. They were removed, that the wall might 
be repainted, to the garret store-room, that limbo 
of things lost on earth, — moodily reposing in an 
oblivion to them distasteful, still mindful of the 
sweet sun and moon, and hourly expectant of the 
foot that never comes. There were abashed and 
humiliated portraits, maps rolled in dusty cylin- 
ders, heaps of forgotten books, sketches of rosy 
lips and dewy eyes whose originals were now 
dames with triple chins, and in whose grandchil- 
dren only you can find the likeness continued. 
There were broken and disjointed lunch-baskets, 
whose yawning voids seemed to ache with the 
memory of far-off days, when by the sparkling 
sea, sea freshness in their hair, the joy of youth 
in every eye, taper fingers had opened the box 
of sandwiches, and from modest tumblers timo- 
rous lips had tasted the unintoxicating claret. 

There was a shadowy background, dim with 
spiders' webs, where reigned a confusion of cur- 



THE GASHED HELMET. 145 

tains, rolls of wall-paper, easels, and knick-knacks 
generally, among which were corselet and pike, 
and, towering over all, the injured helmet. 

One day, at twilight, our hero chanced to visit 
this store-room, to ascertain the condition of the 
armor, preparatory to re-establishing his trophy. 
The room was so stifling that he opened a win- 
dow in the corridor to freshen it. It was rather 
dark, and the various articles were blocking them- 
selves into masses of shadow, thus increasing the 
confusion of lines and tints disordered enough 
already. As he caught a glimpse, in the corner, 
of the helmet, he stood transfixed. A crouching 
figure was bending over it, and with its sleeve 
was rubbing delicately the helmet's gash, as if it 
were a fresh wound it was staunching. The face 
was turned away, but the whole attitude and 
action were full of an interest in this occupation, 
and the look of the figure was in harmony with 
the helmet. It reminded him of pictures by 
Botticelli or Carpaccio, in the costume. The 
wide sleeve with which it was caressing the 
wound, a different color to either leg covered 
with tight-fitting cloth, ribbons with points hang- 
ing here and there, and a little flat cap with a 
feather in front, all were in harmony with the 

10 



146 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

occupation of the figure. He had not watched it 
long, when his old desire for spirit intercourse 
made him advance toward the spectre. At the 
sound of his foot, it slightly turned its head, and 
for a moment he beheld a haggard and mourn- 
ful face, yet steeped in a dreamy indifference : 
the nose was aquiline, and there were traces of 
color in the cheeks ; but yet all so unsubstantial, 
so woe-begone, so hopeless, as if the humanity 
once there had suffered blight and dwindling. 
When Geister had reached a certain point, he 
felt as if waking from a dream. Somehow, all 
had disappeared, and yet little or nothing was 
changed. It was as if the cloud-rack of Polonius 
had unlimned itself, and what it was, was not. 
Spiridion moved to the helmet, passed his hand 
over the fissure, glanced at the incongruous heap 
about him, and, then returning, endeavored to 
recreate, from the point he had seen him, his 
ghostly visitor. 

When there, he was amused to discover what 
had deceived him. The wind circulating from 
the corridor moved a bit of window-curtain at 
times across the helmet ; and a carpet-bag, some 
books, and a roll of Japanese embroidery ac- 
counted, as well as they could, for the rest. He 



THE GASHED HELMET. 147 

noticed that when the wind was strongest, it 
expanded the Japanese-work so that he saw a 
head vaguely upon it which might have been the 
one which had looked so like a Florentine. As 
he removed the armor, and gave it to his servant 
to take down stairs, he muttered to himself : 
" Shadows — only shadows ! It is all uncertainty, 
and my fondest assurances play with me by such 
tricks as these. How should I dare to believe 
any thing visits me from the other world after 
such pitiful jugglery as this ? " 

The day was too far advanced for the trophy 
to be organized and set up that evening ; so leav- 
ing it all heaped together in the hall, he threw 
himself into his favorite arm-chair, and taking a 
book tried to read. But to his listless eye the 
characters seemed to say nothing, or, if they did, 
nothing which could claim his attention. So 
tossing the book by, he fell into a state of 
dream or vision, he never quite knew which, but 
which left in his memory a brand as if he had 
touched the confines of other spheres, and had 
listened to a voice muttering of unintelligible 
secrets, speaking the language of a far country, 
and of things whose counterpart is wanting here. 

He had scarcely closed his eyes in sleep before 



148 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

he felt his sleeve twitched so smartly that he 
woke. Between him and the empty fireplace 
was a shapeless form, dusky, uncertain, — at first 
making him suppose a black Newfoundland dog 
was there. From it came a chill influence like a 
cold wind blowing upon him ; and with the chill 
a sympathetic relation with the creature there 
which absorbed and conquered him. He noticed 
that the figure remained but for a moment dark 
and without shape. A movement from within, 
irregular, spasmodic, of light and motion, agitated 
it. There was a beating in it, for a heart, a dull 
lambency of flame like the phosphoric gleam seen 
on summer nights in southern seas ; and as 
this shot and penetrated the clumsy form, by lit- 
tle rhythmic leaps, it swiftly took on the dress, 
the countenance, of the figure he had seen bend- 
ing over the helmet. He threw his eyes, though 
with difficulty, into the corners of the room, and 
bringing them suddenly back, he hoped, as he had 
done above stairs, to thus annihilate his uncom- 
fortable visitor. But it was always persistently 
there, and the stream of influence from it so en- 
veloped and permeated him that his life seemed 
invaded by this alien one, his own memory 
blotted out, and one wholly unfamiliar taking its 



THE GASHED HELMET. 149 

place. It carried him to other scenes, to other 
times, but painted in such strong colors that he 
seemed living then. It was not so much one act, 
one hour, one feeling, that he shared, but the 
atmosphere, the flavor of many. He found his 
brain suddenly emptied of all the familiar move- 
ments of our modern life, stripped of the new ac- 
quisitions of our race, which harness the thoughts 
of man as with fire, and whirl with flaming 
wheels along life's highway. He felt a duller 
current to his blood, a slowness in the motion of 
his fancy; but with all a tenacious and angry 
personality as of one smarting with injury. And 
yet, accompanying this fierce distress, was a sense 
of baffled will, a vague groping for he knew not 
what, an aimless motion, a perpetual feeling of 
homelessness and defeat. He seemed to live over 
the life of the creature by his side, from whose 
open breast, as from a book, streamed upon bis 
consciousness a tale of other days. To his 
modern sensibility it felt remote, though real, 
childish with an ignorance we have escaped, em- 
barrassed by usages which fettered, by customs 
which brutalized. Narrow streets where through 
the clinging shadows came the clink of arms ; 
here and there a torch flaring from the portal 



150 CHEQUER-WORK. 

of great palaces of stone, and touching in the 
street with a splash of brightness, water ^ — or 
was it blood ? At times, surrounded by his men- 
at-arms, a resplendent figure came by, his Genoa 
velvet and chains of gold shining for a moment 
ere he passed through that sullen portal. And 
then arches, threaded by the shining river, above 
which, in little boxes, swarthy men filed and 
chiselled ornaments for the church, for the pal- 
ace, for the person ; so quivering with the new life 
of art that the least thing had a grandeur of its 
own, for trifles and knick-knacks were to become 
sacred heirlooms for the impoverished future. 
And he saw towers ascending, with little columns 
and a lace-work of stone so delicate, so aerial, that 
it seemed the hand might poise and toss them as 
easily as it could some chiselled dagger in those 
little shops upon the Arno. Men habited like 
the figure at his side were moving everywhere, 
in parti-colored, harlequin-like dresses, a little 
feather playing above their caps, but all made 
sober by the long sword which quivered on the 
thigh of each. He saw, or thought he saw, a few 
eager faces shielded by their mantles from the 
blinding heat, while a passionate and fiery man 
moved among coils of burning bronze, dashing 



THE GASHED HELMET. 151 

hither and thither with enthusiasm, made sombre 
by anxiety, and tossing recklessly into the greedy 
maw of the furnace all the metal he could lay his 
hands on, with alternate exclamations of exulta- 
tion and despair. 

Then suddenly he moved with an orderly and 
happy crowd, at whose front, in their robes, walked 
the great Florentine magistrates ; then came 
with bared head, and a countenance no longer 
distorted by anguish and anxiety, but proud and 
peaceful with assured success, one he had long 
divined, and whose glorious group still holds its 
place in the historic loggia it adorns, side by side 
with that other work of his adored friend and 
master, the David, in whose limbs still perhaps 
lingers something of the awkwardness of the 
block which gave it birth. The people shouted, 
tossed their caps in air, crying as now they only 
shout for some great politician or conqueror, 
" Evviva il nostro Benvenuto ! " 

A sharper chill struck through him who lis- 
tened to the tale, the glow deepened within the 
sorrowful figure at his side. Bubbles, as of fire, 
seemed to well up within him, and break as they 
touched the air, in sighs. Slowly it raised its 
unearthly eyes, slowly it touched with its icy 



152 CHEQUER-WORK. 

hand the knee of its entranced companion, and 
something like a voice, something like a murmur 
of leaves eddying in the wind down a deserted 
runnel, muttered : — 

" Those were our best days. Then I was 
happy, for he loved me. I was the friend and 
companion of that younger brother of whom he 
writes. He loved our martial spirit, our endless 
activity, our courage without stain. He never 
heard of our many duels, our partisan contests, 
without rubbing his hands in glee. ' If I were 
not so drawn,' he said, 'to this mistress whom I 
love, this goddess who obliges me to toil and moil 
in metal, I should love to go capering with you 
for adventure's sake about the country.' 

" Happily he did not go ; though, when war 
called him, he showed that he could handle the 
sword as easily as the graver. He lived for art 
and immortality ; but we, improvident of the 
treasure committed to us, spilt our life in a frolic, 
as a boy spills water. 

" It was Giannetta whom the younger Cellini 
loved, and, when her father hunted us from his 
house with dogs and armed kinsmen, she fled to 
us between the branching orange-boughs over the 
garden- wall, and dropped, like perfect fruit, into 



THE GASHED HELMET. 153 

her lover's arms. But soon the clash of steel, 
'the snarl and growl of mastiffs, precipitated our 
flight. They escaped ; but while I was cover- 
ing their retreat, and had already tumbled two 
knaves before me, I was entangled and sur- 
rounded by those I delayed from the pursuit. 
I fought well and gayly, but, as I turned my head 
to see how my lovers fared, I heard a great sound 
which seemed to obliterate all other sounds, saw 
a great light, followed by a greater darkness, and 
then — my folly, my passion, my heat had all gone 
from me. 

" Yet there was a glassy continuity of my being. 
In some respects, it was not unlike the change 
from sleep to waking. Tlie life behind me was 
a dream, but its motive force continued. I felt 
with repulsion in what a turbid, wearisome, false 
medium I had been. As plants underground fail 
to comprehend the blithe air, the happy sunshine 
to which they shall attain, and yet may keep 
transmitted legendary notions of something better 
and brighter than what they feel, so the grovel- 
ling, subterranean instincts of my being now felt 
themselves winged and powerful. The flight of 
birds through the air, the movement of fishes in 
the sea, I recognized as hints of a power of loco- 



154 CHEQUER-WORK. 

motion which I now possessed ; a movement of 
the will, a flutter of desire, were as wing or fin 
to the spirit which penetrated everywhere. And 
yet I had not the sense of freedom which such a 
state implies. There are two kinds of gravita- 
tion, of attraction, — that of matter to itself, and 
that of the soul to the fount of light where its 
Creator lives : it is as natural for the spirit to 
seek him as for an apple to fall to earth. If the 
spirit and its sheath were a harmonious unit, 
there were no impediment to this upward flight. 
But with few is this happy unity ; for the soul is 
weighted with the mistakes, the crimes, against 
which it vainly protested while on earth. Purifi- 
cation is slow and painful. As a bird limed by 
the fowler, evil still binds us and we beat our 
wings in vain ; and. this intermediate condition, 
in which the joys of earth are withdrawn, while 
as yet we are not fitted for the heavenly banquet, 
produces a discomfort, a wandering, restless seek- 
ing which to many spirits makes earth more at- 
tractive than the incomplete home in which they 
find themselves. They feel that pallid life, that 
twilight existence, which the Greek and Roman 
poets ascribed to the departed. Even the ma- 
jestic Achilles held the beds of asphodel small 



THE GASHED HELMET. " 155 

comfort where the prowess of his arm was but 
a vain glorj. And I had lived a life so tainted 
with blood and quarrel, so animal, even in its 
gajety, that for a long while I felt an alien in 
my new country. And the sudden wreck of my 
being, dissolved by no appointed disease, but shat- 
tered rudely in its pride of strength, brought me 
within the movement of that law of which your 
ghost-stories are full. You read and hear that 
where there has been the crime of murder, or a 
death sudden and violent, the reappearing spirit 
haunts the fatal spot of its occurrence ; to piece 
on the broken thread of its existence by es- 
tablishing, if possible, the old relations. This 
brought me to tlie garret where you found me. 
I was, indeed, there, seeking to reunite by the 
touch of that fatal helmet my old with my new 
life. You were right when you thought you saw 
me impotently caressing it. But ashamed to 
be so found before your searching eye, I diffused 
myself in space, leaving, to trick your reason, 
the colored scraps which cheated you by an acci- 
dental resemblance. 

" But I shall not come again to you. I have 
worked out my probation. The sights and sounds 
of earth have no farther attraction for me ; they 



156 CHEQUER-WORK. 

are, indeed, becoming repulsive. I am learning 
the law of love and forgetting the law of hate. 
I can see the spots in your spirit which you 
should cleanse before they are ingrained ; for 
each is' a seed of madness. Do not try to know 
the unknowable, to fathom the fathomless. Be 
content' with the life you have, and learn to see 
and feel the Creator in the glories of the beauti- 
ful world where he has placed you. Do not tor- 
ment the peace these bestow by the sting of 
unattainable desires. Even the Greeks knew 
this, and the mortal who desired the embraces 
of a god perished at the touch of a life so far 
above her own. 

" Farewell, and learn through moderation, hope, 
and patience the body's health, and through that 
the health of the mind." 

Spiridion found himself awaking from his 
trance. The oppressive weight which had crushed 
him seemed to slip from him as he opened his 
eyes, and disappear with the unearthly visitant, 
if such he were. Everywhere the moonlight fell ; 
its silver pencil touched with cleansing the space 
about him, and chased afar all the dusky films 
around his brain. 



THE GASHED HELMET, 157 

He opened the window, and invited Nature to 
medicine his recovered spirit, to soothe the dis- 
turbance his phantasy had created ; and her sweet, 
everlasting sanity seemed to come to him through 
it and do him good. He suddenly felt that his 
organization — here at least — was made for this 
world, and that no mind could or should bear the 
strain he had put upon his. Led by an immortal 
thirst, piqued by curiosity, he had gone to that 
dangerous verge where the flesh dissolves and the 
will is lost, to be fed only by the husks tossed to 
him by unseen hands. Fruit, food they might be, 
of other and happier climes, but here unsatisfy- 
ing and sapless, when not poisonous. He re- 
proached himself, as Faust did, for the pursuit 
of forbidden knowledge, and for tampering with 
issues which led he knew not where. This was 
borne to him through the open window, and eased 
while it reproached his pain. He sighed, "Alas! 
here only can God be for us, in the world he has 
made for man. He does not hide himself in 
fathomless space, in some planetary solitude, but 
is here, fronting us in every beautiful, every awful 
thing that he has made, and better understood 
in the simplest flower than in the cunningest 
hypothesis, or any spiritual snare." 



158 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

As he thought thus, dewy fingers seemed to 
pass along his forehead, and remove as a stain 
tlie blotted memory of his vision. He sat and 
listened. In the bright moonlight, far down to 
the sea, the wholesome brown of the autumnal 
grass ran till it divided into shadowy chasms. 
Near him, one or two fringed gentians joyously 
tossed their azure circles, and spoke to his heart 
a language which, had no need of words. A cedar, 
wrapped in its anchorage of shadow, twisted its 
sturdy limbs which refuse the subjugation of the 
storm, strengthening his mind to a robuster mood. 
Out of the fathomless heavens the stars twinkled 
with no sly, no mean suggestion, of a conjurer's 
secret which they withheld, but looked to be a 
frame-work of splendor. He felt man is called 
upon to adore but not to comprehend ; and for the 
first time for many years, he looked upon night as 
some dear but cloistered nun, and not the hooded 
inquisitor he once had held her. Beyond the 
chasms of the cliff, like the voice of nations, joy- 
ous as if to share his joy, its cadenced thunder 
lifted in sympathy the ocean within him, as crest 
after crest struck and died upon the shore, — and 
the moon caught up the distance and glazed it 
with dancing hollows of brightness, edged with 



THE GASHED HELMET, 159 

silver the line of bursting foam, and showered 
the dripping and ebon rocks with such a reticula- 
tion of shifting frost-work, such a murmur of 
happy life, that Spiridion started to his feet, ran, 
and leaned from the window, exclaiming, " And I 
dare slight such a world as this to chase the 
shadow of another ! To forego all this glory of 
God, which ebbs and flows through every chamber 
of my breast, in order to people it with baleful 
shadows, and trust to auguries that I dare not 
think divine ! " 

His spirit was soothed and sweetened in this 
night-bath of nature, where the glory of the 
heavens and the freshness of the sea stayed with 
him long and kept his slumbers light and healthy 
till near the dawn. But then he rolled from gulf to 
gulf of sleep, like the weed'he had lately watched 
in the moonlight, till he was left stranded and 
unhappy upon the shore he had hoped never 
again to visit. Strange fancies, repulsive pic- 
tures, evoked by his spiritual past, arose as he lay 
weltering in the sea of sleep, like the drowned sol- 
diers who leap and stare from the eddying whirl- 
pool of Niagara, and they looked at him till he 
cowered with terror. He had given the goblins 
hospitality, and they would not accept a dis- 



160 CHEQUER-WORK. 

missal. Like snakes tangled in a hedge, his saner 
thoughts tried to uncoil and separate themselves 
from those the spectres had implanted. In be- 
wilderment, he failed to distinguish his real from 
their induced beliefs. Smiling Circe had handed 
him the intoxicating cup, he felt his birthright 
endangered, and the encroachment of her diabolic 
animalism supplanting his former nature. He 
thought himself sinking engulfed in the great sea 
on which he had lately looked, and, dying, he 
stretched his hands towards the moon in agony, 
and cried, — 

" Oh save me ! for it is night, and that is 
thine ! Thou spirit, who comest not to us with 
the clearness and cheer of day, — baleful, dead, 
hopeless if thou art, yet I feel I am thy slave. 
Thou mayest torment me, but save me at least 
from the baying of these hounds ! these demons 
of my thought which chase to rend me ! " 

And white like ivory, against the glimmering 
moonlight of his chamber, in his unrest the bed- 
clothes all displaced, he lay like Girodet's En- 
dymion, fair to look upon, happy you would have 
thought, but for that twitch of pain across the 
brow. The full moon was gazing in on him; 
and this it was, the mocking arbiter of his 



THE GASHED HELMET. 161 

dream, whose magnetic wings are loaded with 
madness for the sleeper, which disturbed his re- 
covered sanity. 

But that cup of poisonous light soon passed 
beyond his window. With a groan, he fell upon 
his face, and tasted a sleep at once so sweet and 
deep that refreshment stole through all his limbs, 
and his brain rose and fell upon the gentle tide 
of slumber as does an infant on its mother's 
breast. 



11 



YI. 



THE PHILISTINE. 



VI. 

THE PHILISTINE. 



TT is some time since Mr, Matthew Arnold, bor- 
rowing from the Germans, introduced into 
England the terms " Philistine, Philistinism." 
All may not know what it means. It is a phrase 
hurled into the teeth of a life too mechanical and 
respectable, by the impulsive children of Bohe- 
mia. It is the protest in society, by the emo- 
tional part of it, — the lovers of truth, beauty, 
grace, for their own sakes, — against the orderly 
but somewhat stupid phalanx of labor, routine, 
and good sense. It is a cry of revolt from the 
powers of the air against the patient forces which 
are subduing and shaping the earth. Probably 
the world has, always seen this antagonism : 
everywhere winged and subtle minds must have 
found themselves unclassed among orderly and 
logical thinkers. 



166 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

"Whole races have this antagonism. The Latin 
race to this day gives a value to art criticism 
and poetry which is grudgingly bestowed by the 
Anglo-Saxon. We speak of the Semitic people 
as having a genius for religion, the Aryan for art 
and culture, and the northern European races as 
having one -for individual liberty. 

The expression " Philistine," so far as we 
know, has not been imported into America. The 
minority which might use it is too small and 
overborne to dare to be so audacious. Yet, if it 
were introduced, it should mean, here, something 
different from its cognates in either Germany or 
England. The emotional element, nourished by 
soft climates, which inspire the love of beauty, 
and the repose which favors contemplation, does 
not here find its natural home. A Parthenon sits 
at its ease beside the blue -^gsean, and a Plato 
naturally whispers his day-dream under the spirit- 
ual olive-trees. Beauty for its own sake, thought 
for its own sake, found nothing to make them 
ashamed under the violet chasms of Pentelicus. 
Life was simple, for the climate asked for no 
palace as shelter, and none of the complex 
contrivances of comfort which burthen their pos- 
sessor and tempt to tlie vulgarities of purse-proud 



THE PHILISTINE. 167 

ostentation. Theirs was a happy balance be- 
tween the too little and the too much, when the 
mind moves at its ease, and material conditions 
are helps and not hinderarices. 

But with us, here, a thousand reasons con- 
tribute to diminish or delay the charm of the 
aesthetic spirit. Not only do we have a country 
into which every lineage and line of descent 
intertwine with the headlong impetuosity of a 
cataract, one with the fairest fields, the widest 
waters, the richest mines, inviting occupation 
and use, but a fervent sky whose most powerful 
quality is stimulus, and all these naturally in- 
tensify the practical industry which finally fur- 
nishes our band of Philistines. No lowly hut, 
with here and there a terra-cotta figure of some 
graceful goddess or majestic god, suffices. No 
tunic and sandals only are possible when the 
weather can match itself against the height and 
depth of the maddest thermometer. No sweet 
words of wisdom from Socrates, where the wind 
would soon drive his group of scholars to shelter. 
But the wheels of our Olympia, dim with no igno- 
ble dust, burn in a fierce game of resolute and 
disputed rivalry, whose reward is neither the 
parsley-leaf nor the myrtle, but the most substan- 



168 CHEQUBE-WORK. 

tial dividends, and houses which are fortresses 
against the cold, or sea-side bird-cages for shelter 
from the arrows which midsummer may send. 

Yet, in despite of the material conquests of 
our beloved land, equally the wonder of our- 
selves and foreign nations, a thought now and 
then, even if it be one of pity, must be cast 
towards the group of artist-souls which will try 
to find its life beside the rushing wheels of labor. 
They are like the flowers under the stately trees 
of Goat Island, shaken by every breath from the 
boiling caldron below, but finding a sylvan seclu- 
sion of tlieir own, being so sweetly differentiated 
from the majestic tumult around. Only an Anglo- 
Saxon father could have written of his son, — 

" And penned a stanza when lie should engross." 

And that poor son, it should be remembered, did 
not make his temperament, but found himself 
clothed with it from the first. 

A certain average of fine and gentle spirits 
is always born into the world with hands less 
fitted for the plough or the axe than for the pen- 
cil or the pen. This class finds itself, from the 
first, in lively contrast with its sturdier brothers. 
They must do the work for which they are fitted, 



THE PHILISTINE. 169 

or they are lost. Each Pegasus in harness 
wastes a force which is profitable and at home 
upon loftier summits than the field which invites 
it to the plough. His nature now, as ever, is 
in complete antagonism to that of the sword- 
bearing soldier or the man of action. He may 
sing the deeds of the one or sit at the feet of the 
other, gratefully repaying a protection which 
makes effort possible to him ; but he is not made 
for the battle of life and the survival of the 
fittest, if that be he who is most successful in 
energetic enterprise. What is to be done with 
him ? Clearly, a properly organized society owes 
all its children a living. And this class, fed, it may 
be, upon the loftiest dreams, and living in Span- 
isli chateaux rich with pearls of price, has often 
little else but its dreams for food and cloud-land 
for shelter. When the goal is reached, when the 
target is struck in the gold by some successful 
one of this group, the world is never ungrateful 
for the addition of beauty which Genius thus gives 
to a barren life. For the soul in all men wilt vin- 
dicate its children : the man content not to live 
by bread alone, but by the spirit -of truth and love- 
liness which nourishes his better part, will be 
justified of all if he show by success reason for 



170 CHEQUER-WORK. 

this justification. And then sympathy, honors, 
wealth will be gladly poured out at his feet. But, 
alas ! they are too often the feet of the dead, 
and will never more be beautiful upon the moun- 
tains. The tidings they bring will be spoken by 
other mouths than theirs, and the bread which 
might have kept their life among men will moulder 
and decay in repentant belatedness. 

And then the world sorrows, not without rea- 
son, and builds the monument which the dead can 
never see. For suddenly it discovers, while it was 
jostling selfishly in the narrow ways of compe- 
tition, each for himself and against all others, 
that this one was working for all, devoting him- 
self with an instinct stronger than the pelican's, 
and feeding from his breast, filled with food of 
the gods, countless multitudes. 

Of course it is best that it should be as it is. 
Their kingdom is not of this world, and they know 
it. They do not push with the crowd, and must 
accept the alternative of their withdrawal. And 
when' prosperity too easily overtakes them, their 
lyric song is as that of the bobolink, which, we 
are told, expires gorged with gluttonous good 
luck in the rice-fields of the South. Nor in this 
time of wide acceptance should it be forgotten 



THE PHILISTINE, 171 

that the critic, the poet, the inventor of genius^ are 
in a -worldly sense better looked after than ever 
before. The leisure of many filled with the 
chant of the singer will give of their full cup 
something to their enchanter. The critic will 
share with the novelist he criticises the profits of 
the publisher. The inventor will yoke his skill 
to the car of progress, and find it filled with 
compensating gold. But for all this, the common 
ear, stunned with the roar of machinery, is often 
too deaf for the cry of the suffering children of 
phantasy. They are not seen upon the mart, 
their voice is not loud upon the exchange, no 
private signal of theira waves from rejoicing 
masts, but they live in the shadow of seclusion, 
in silence and sometimes in tears. They need a 
hand to lead them out to the light ; they need 
some one to sow the seeds of encouragement and 
advantage when there ; but, above all, they need 
what is due to their sensitive and defenceless 
natures, the sympathy which comes from recog- 
nition of their just place in the order of life, 
and without which they may perish undiscovered 
even by themselves. 

The apparent contradiction between the Philis- 
tine and the Bohemian is certainly somewhat a 



172 CHEQUEE-WORK. 

congenital one, but it is not all that. Pegasus in 
harness does not always faint in the traces, but, 
though reluctantly, will drag a load to the bitter 
end. Circumstances are often omnipotent to 
sliape a man's career, despite his preferences. 
Oftentimes the Philistine secretes an Arabia Felix 
of his own in the depths of his consciousness, 
where some day he hopes to roam an untamed 
Arab of the desert. He plays with his idea by 
his fireside ; he coquets with a liberty he shall 
never enjoy ; and though the day may shut to him 
the doors of escape, night will beckon him 
through her ivory portals into a Bohemia of her 
own, where in maddest overtures and pranks his 
spirit may revenge itself upon the grinding 
tyranny of the day. 

Practically it is found that routine and hard 
work will not suffice. More and more the world 
needs, and learns to value, its vacation. Horses 
are turned out to pasture, and why should not 
man be ? He comes back to his work re- 
freshed, and perhaps more work is accomplished 
by his escape. And so Philistia gets a Bohe- 
mia of its own. The livery of his profession will 
be laid aside by the Philistine, and something of 
the free ways, the jaunty costume, the airy inter- 



THE PHILISTINE. 173 

course of the Bohemian are his. The sight of 
him in Switzerland or Colorado suggests how 
natural to all of us this Bohemianism is. Were it 
not for the duties which chain us to the oar, the 
terrible fatalities of food and lodging, we might 
all of us be citizens of that strange country, 
lawless and free, where taxes are unknown, and 
where each wandering Elijah is fed by ravens, 
and upon whose sealess shores, where geography 
as well as routine are not, Shakespeare managed 
to find an unheard-of seaport. 

All this the boys show us clearly. These little 
arabs, little Bohemians, know that that country 
belongs to them. They feel in their bones that 
the day will soon come when they shall learn 
the pangs of exile and replace their freedom 
by drudgery. And so they make the most of it 
■while it lasts. Their hand is against every man, 
and they defy Themis and all penalties. They 
may break our windows, rob our fruit-trees, ring 
our door-bells, but we keep a tender place in our 
hearts for the little Ishmaelites ; and our thought, 
like another Joseph, is drawn from the darkness 
of its prison to share with them the joy of un- 
bounded space and freedom from all ties divine 
or human. When manhood grows heavy with the 



174 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

chains of habit, when orderly respectability has 
kept " to the right (or left) as the law directs," 
then when two of these venerable Bohemians 
who have known each other as boys, encounter, 
how in their faces they look, past the mask of 
circumstance, the crust of habit, to find in some 
latent expression a token of the dear old naughti- 
ness, the perilous pleasures, of which they are no 
longer ashamed. 

How often do we forget that contiguous to 
Bohemia lies that unseen land where we hope to 
be free from toil, where sorrow shall not come, 
and of which all heroes, prophets, and reformers 
are heralds and predictions. The men appointed 
to carry forward their fellows to a higher 
point are mostly nomadic. The task put upon 
them refuses the ties of family and home. 
Home is anchorage, and they must navigate un- 
tried seas. Not only did Socrates seek his fol- 
lowers in streets and by-ways, a school of direct 
personal intercourse, but St. Paul must see the 
human race face to face, inquisitive of all men, 
moving from city to city, and only dying when he 
had traversed the whole breadth of the ancient 
civilization. And that other, his Master and Lord, 
gave him the law for so doing, for he fetched his 



THE THILISTINE. 175 

message from town to town, from village to ham- 
let, through the whole length and breadth of 
the country he honored by his birth. The dust 
was ever upon his feet, the sweat upon his fore- 
head : by no less humility, by no less endurance, 
could the Word be brought or scattered amongst 
his children. We know little of such Emigrants 
from heaven at present. No thought of such a 
message as he brought reaches us now as we 
look upon the dusty feet of those who say, as 
he did, — 

" The foxes liave holes, and the birds of the air have nests, 
but the Son of Man hath not where to lay his head." 

Though the law disallow him, we dare not 
wholly disallow the tramp : for, through the 
alarm we feel for his outlawry, a suggestion will 
pierce of something infinitely precious which may 
be hidden behind his squalor ; and the thought of 
the Master, once wandering as he does, will soften 
our rebuke and melt us with the feeling of our 
common humanity. 

Yet on the whole these two classes of Philis- 
tines and Bohemians live very comfortably to- 
gether, and do not much get in each others' way. 
For the most part, in the same city, in the same 



176 CHEQUER-WORK. 

street, perhaps in the same house, their lives will 
flow unmingling, and each content with its own. 
Secretly, at the bottom, each hates and despises 
the other. Their desires, their judgments, are not 
the same ; they are indispensable to each other, yet 
the essence of their being is in conflict. One will 
call the honorable millionaire " a brute of busi- 
ness ;^^ the other will cast to him, as to a beggar, 
scanty alms of praise or profit. Yet each, in the 
forum of his conscience, is at peace ; and they 
can live without quarrelling, for the very reason 
that their difference is so extreme. 

Matthew Arnold thought the opinion of Eng- 
land, in criticism and art, was too Philistine. 
Ruskin shares the same idea, and they both try 
to hang the counting-house and the mill with 
garlands of beauty. Arnold notices how in that 
Latin city of Paris there is a more dexterous 
analysis of work, and that work steeped in a 
grace and beauty which flows from the atmos- 
phere of Bohemia. To us, of course, tliis criticism 
would apply, for have we not, besides the tradi- 
tional business accent of our northern race, an in- 
creased speed produced by the unexampled chances 
a new country must offer ? Here, in our railroad 
rush, the wheels of activity go over and crush 
every wayside lounger beside the track ; and there- 



THE PHILISTINE. 177 

fore, if Matthew Arnold's hint be listened to in 
England in favor of soft and mitigating influences, 
doubly should it be heeded here, where life is on 
fire with enterprise and activity. Nor, perhaps 
(but that is not so certain), is the combined and 
strenuous effort here of many gifted men to lay 
deep and solid bases in museums and schools for 
art-culture, liable to encourage a debilitated, im- 
pecunious, but fostered mendicancy. Young peo- 
ple may say, " in offering us such training you 
implied a living by it," and the ornamental frac- 
tion of society may thus become a burden to the 
rest. But the answer to this would seem to be, 
besides that such fears are cowardly, tliat now 
we are a garden all abroad, the weeds jostling the 
flowers ; but better training will raise so high the 
point of success that meaner spirits must starve 
out of the field. The poor ignorant innocent whose 
family and country friends thought him a Raphael 
in bud will be taught to know his unimportance, 
and the farm retain to advantage that exported 
inability which we have so long known as a bur- 
then to the city's hospitality. If, through encour- 
agement to Art, we create a Bohemia of our own, 
Philistia must look to see that through neglect 
and discouragement it does not perish before its 
maturity of glory. 



VII. 

RAMBLING IN ENGLAND. 



vn. 

RAMBLING IN ENGLAND. 



T^NGLISH air is capital for taking the fever 
out of an American. The damp sponge 
of the chmate there cools his brain and tran- 
quillizes his nerves. He forgets his hurry, his 
newspaper, his routine ; something of the Eng- 
lishman he has inherited comes to the surface, 
and makes him recognize the fatherland as his 
own. If, indeed, he is the victim of a plan, pro- 
jected at home, to leave no stone unturned, and 
to see every thing, he may manage to keep his 
nervousness a-going for a good while after his ar- 
rival ; and if he is in London he finds the same 
temptation as at home in the boiling activity 
about him, the pressure of the season, and the 
many invitations to sight-seeing. But if he find 
himself in the country, at the house of friends, 
he may regulate his pulse by theirs, and get the 
good of his visit. 



182 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

There is something about country life in Eng- 
land which especially astonishes and delights an 
American. It is not a bit of living inlaid in the 
rush of city excitement, but a complete whole, 
a substantial thing. The purely city man can 
never love it. Lamb and Johnson could make 
nothing of it. Certainly it is not very exciting, 
but it suits the slow, thoughtful nature of the 
English mind. The life in the open air, the care 
of an estate, the imperishable charm and bliss of 
the hunt, give action to the muscles of the Eng- 
lishman, and the rest takes care of itself. Either 
he or his ladies read his garden as an open 
book. They are botanists, often geologists, or, 
if nothing else, practical farmers and arboricultu- 
rists. As the satisfaction of living has much 
to do with sentiment, with them a belief in the 
dignity and propriety of country life is an article 
of national faith. This comes from the fact that 
the possession of a country seat mostly implies 
an ancient lineage, and stands as one proof of it. 
The owner feels his ancestors about him. They 
breathe from brasses and marbles in the village 
church a continued companionship, and the lout 
who bows to him bows not so much to the indi- 
vidual as to the living expression of all the hon- 



RAMBLING IN ENGLAND. 183 

ors, dignity, and importance which the long years 
have bequeathed. This healthiness of life, this fel- 
lowship with Nature and growing things, is of the 
utmost use to the Englishman, as a bath of recu- 
peration from the fatigues of Parliament, the 
anxieties of business, and the frivolity of foreign 
travel. And this is why, in a sense true of no 
other nation, England is the country. France 
has her chateau, and Italy her villeggiatura ; but 
somehow the sense of home does not follow these 
much into their rural Paradise. They frolic 
there, they dance there, they flirt there ; but they 
do not quite live there. 

But in England, London is but a watering- 
place, and the best families come up for the skir- 
mish of fashionable amusement, the theatres, and 
parliament, only to settle back the more into 
themselves when they are in the house of their 
fathers. 

And such beautiful houses they often are ; 
some stately and ample, with a breadth which 
would be palatial if it were not for something 
of rustic suitableness which takes the edge off 
the splendor. And the old Elizabethan house 
of brick is there, which you may think even ugly 
if you wish to, with its windows projecting into 



184 CHEQUEE-WORK. 

the lawn, its stacks of chimneys, its restorations 
and additions, the ivy complementing the color 
of the brick in great patches of lustrous green, 
and the sturdy trees as ancient and decorative 
as the house, asserting an equality of importance 
with any architecture, and there is an utter ab- 
sence of that raw look of a weight of stone 
imposed upon the place, that discord, inevitable 
in a new structure, with surroundings where every 
thing else keeps its date, — these give such places 
a charm not found elsewhere. 

And then the life, the art, the books, the 
beauty, so often hid away there ! As a well-bred 
Englishman parades not his accomplishments, so 
you may stumble upon a Titian, an ivory of Cel- 
lini, a priceless missal, without assertion modestly 
hiding itself in an unostentatious privacy. 

Washington Irving was fortunate in being able 
to breathe the old-fashioned country air of Eng- 
land. . He celebrated this rural existence which, 
though it still exists, has lost much of its charac- 
ter. The railway kills the country house. It is 
perpetually saying, " Let me convey you to livelier 
scenes, let me suggest a visit to the Continent ; " 
and so the old squire is secretly imping his wings 
for flight, awaiting the hint of wife or daughter. 



RAMBLING IN ENGLAND, 185 

And absenteeism is increasing naturally. The 
moment a thing does not pay in honor and dig- 
nity, economy of money is readily thought of. 
Sir Roger de Coverley must keep a certain state, 
and march to church with his gold-headed cane 
between curtseying tenants ; but he can now efface 
his grandeur and live on a few francs a day on 
the Continent, and thus save his guineas. All 
over the world it is the same thing. The stimu- 
lus applied to mind and body makes, in every 
country, the former peace seem to be crushing 
stupidity. Not only, the squire runs to Paris 
and Monaco, but the farmer's boy escapes to the 
town where he can find the excitement his brain 
craves ; but yet so conservative is England, so 
rooted deep in the soil is her national habit of 
country-living, that it will be long before it can 
be seriously changed for the worse. One feels 
that the curate of Miss Austen's novels would now 
find a throb in the air, an intimation of shuttles 
and railways, which would disturb him. We hear 
something of this in the novels of Mr. Trollope ; 
and daily and hourly this hum invades the coun- 
try quiet with shriller accent. The beautiful 
clear rivers flow with no temptation to the an- 
gler, polluted by the waste of factories. Chau- 



186 CHEQUER-WORK. 

cer's old sky of tender blue, where the " little 
fowles " soared and sang, is veiled in smoke from 
a thousand chimneys, and the smug citizen, en- 
riched by these ruinous gains, plants his bristling 
pretensions side by side with the modest dignity 
of historic homes. In America the country 
house with difficulty holds its own against the 
lure of cities. The Hudson is becoming deserted, 
as long since have the James Eiver and the Schuyl- 
kill. It would seem as if this living, wholesome 
and ancient as the world, were factitious. The 
house refuses to take root, and its modest exis- 
tence finds itself, like every thing else in America 
which is not business, relegated to the list of dis- 
couraged, condemned conditions, tainted with 
idleness. Therefore, it is the more pleasure to 
talk of the old days, the old ways, the England 
that was, the coaches that have been, and the 
sweet memories of a past which had full leisure 
to imprint themselves upon us. 

So let us go back to boyish days, when, to the 
young American on his travels, England still 
breathed somewhat of Bracebridge Hall and the 
days of the stout gentleman, and when the coach- 
man was king, and barmaids, princesses. 

Such an inn, of the olden time, was the White 



RAMBLING IN ENGLAND. 187 

Hart at Salisbury. In memory I can see the 
plump and curtseying landlady yet. We arrived, 
a ship-load of boys, some of whom would now ex- 
change the burden of their fame for the elasticity 
of that hour. How our hungry nerves devoured 
the England that then was around the harbor of 
Portsmouth, to which, before steam, American 
packets sailed. They still remember us there, 
and mourn the loss of the shillings which dropped 
from the open-handed Americans. How in life's 
young sketch-book were photographed indelibly 
scenes which belong to England only : South- 
ampton Water, with its yachts even then ; the 
deck of the Victory, where Nelson fell ; the mossy 
tower of a country church, and its wavering chimes, 
the antique names written on the headstones 
around ; Carisbrooke Castle, and the gray crum- 
bling stones which led to its tower, and the fan- 
cied face of Charles the First looking from his 
prison bars. Then later, as we neared Wilton, 
came thoughts of the sainted Herbert, preceding 
our first Vandyke, the famous family picture at 
Wilton, and those Spencer-like stretches of park, 
threaded by its lucent river ; and then, when 
every nerve and every bone, as was said by a 
famous poet of our party, was shaking with a 



188 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

thrill of pleasure almost un distinguishable from 
pain, to drop into the hospitable arms of the 
White Hart, and in sleep feed ourselves with 
strength for the next day's rapture. 

For a few days after our arrival we woke .with 
a certain terror, fearing to find our pleasure was 
a dream. And I remember, in the little inn at 
Portsmouth, I woke startled to see the carpet, 
the jug, the basin, of the same pattern I had left 
at home, while, from his seat on the coach before 
the inn, the guard on his bugle was merrily play- 
ing " Behold how brightly breaks the morning," 
an air from the opera of Cinderella, which then was 
delighting Boston. If you ask any of us which 
English cathedral we prefer, with one voice we 
will all cry, " Salisbury, of course." It was our 
cathedral, our first love. When we meet we talk 
of it now, nor is there a more lady-like cathedral 
fit for a lover's worship anywhere, so complete, 
and with such unity, for it was shot up, as is so 
rarely the case, at a single jet. It balances the 
sunlight on the taper-point of its exquisite spire 
so daintily, it sits so clean and separate from 
baser contact upon its carpet of sacred green, 
that neither the richness of Rouen, the Arthurian 
legends of Wells, nor the solemn grandeur of 



RAMBLING IN ENGLAND. 189 

York, can displace m memory the lady of our 
affections. 

Can we ever forget that moon of which we 
covered the shining half by the spire to make the 
" adumbration" suddenly round itself in bright- 
ness while the fixed and stately spire itself 
seemed swaying like a reed as the mottled clouds 
flew past. 

Salisbury is complete, but Netley Abbey was 
our first ruin, preceding Carisbrooke. Yester- 
day I read the enthusiastic letter of a young 
friend of the age that we were, to whom also it 
is his first ruin. Just as we were touched is he 
now. The peace, the pathos of the place, the 
matted ivy shining as if varnished above the 
tender grass, the same arches, like hands brought 
together, touchuig at their finger tips, and still 
praying through the ages into the soft blue, 
while, like the spirits of departed monks, the rooks 
and' jackdaws croak some forgotten service over- 
head, are all there yet. The mellow shadows 
still deepen and enrich by contrast the branching 
lines, the chiselled capitals faintly golden in the 
never harsh light of England's spring. Dear 
Netley! shattered and desolate as thou art, 
thy religion is not dead ; never in its proud- 



190 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

est hour did it so speak to the heart as now. 
Thy calamity comes nearer to us than can 
any surface-shine of prosperity, and time has 
touched thee with a beauty all its own, and adds 
a new reverence to all that consecrates religious 
service. 

The ruin of such a country inn as this was at 
Salisbury is a dreadful loss to all. It was made 
for the travelling gentry and not for. the insatia- 
ble horde who, by the help of iron, now ravage the 
earth. You were received by attentive waiters at 
the landing, ushered to your apartment by the 
curtseying and smiling landlady, all around you 
were the repose and comfort of a private dwelling, 
and when dinner came, the lordly joint was borne 
in by the landlord himself ; and though you 
guessed that your pleasure would at the end be 
translated into £. s. d. of no plebeian ciphers, yet 
that complacency which lodges in the human 
breast saw itself the centre of a hospitality so 
respectful that no bill could make it seem quite 
mercenary. This obsequiousness was a part of the 
contract. It was included with the mutton in the 
account, and did both parties good. The traveller, 
so treated, tried to be the gentleman he passed 
for, and the country inn-keeper was happy in a 



EAMBLING IN ENGLAND. 191 

humility which democracy had not disturbed. But 
now, where the great lines of railroad run, you 
usher yourself into some vast hotel, passing along 
obscure and endless passages, soundless as a 
ghost, for felt has deadened your tread, till you 
reach your box-like inhospitable bedroom, per- 
haps No. 231, and a chambermaid, whose face 
you as little can remember as she cares to notice 
yours, leaves you alone with a gigantic candle- 
stick for, with all the rest gone, the English will 
not submit to the vulgarity of gas. Then you 
sit down by your bedside to contemplate your 
own insignificance. 

Manners now we have no time for. They are 
in the way, and must disappear with other good 
things of the past. Mafiners were the fine arts 
of the court of Louis Quatorze, and it is said 
reached perfection there. All that the Theatre 
Frangais has now to show in style and finish of 
acting belonged then to the Court. Indeed, the 
Theatre Frangais claims to be the sole inheritor 
of the grand manner. To the thoughtful travel- 
ler it is startling to see the genius of Moliere 
moving through all this artifice and convention- 
ality, the chartered libertine of satire. Who but 
the king knew best how artificial that life then 



192 CHEQUER-WORK. 

wsiS ! And he could afPord to enjoy having it 
made fun of. That he should have been the 
staunch and lifelong friend of Moliere is the 
finest trait of the Grand Monarque ; for by this 
he tempered his despotism, and, while exacting 
etiquette, criticised himself. While courtiers pos- 
tured and beauties grimaced, there was another 
critic looking on the pageant, grim, hungry, and 
menacing, with all Moli^re's sense of the absurd- 
ity of the thing, but with the purpose to bring 
his criticism, not into the theatre, but into real 
life. "When later, musket in hand, it condemned 
a histrionic court, it dispersed, with the torn laces, 
the disordered perukes, and the hloody jabots of 
the actors, what was left of the tradition of ele- 
gant manners and the civilities which had sweet- 
ened despotism. 

Now-a-days, Manner, as such, is dead. It went 
out with the snuff-boxes of the last generation. 
Life is too heady and impetuous for it. And for- 
merly good manners implied bad manners. If 
the courtier was obsequious, he trampled on the 
manin. This contempt for people less fortunate 
than themselves still lingers in antiquated socie- 
ties, round feudal courts and belated institutions, 
a survival of the past, and if we have lost the 



RAMBLING IN ENGLAND. 193 

courtesy which charmed, we have escaped the 
contempt which rankled. Nothing in America 
is better than the directness of relation of people 
to each other. A conductor converses with the 
president without either party being false to the 
simple relations of manhood. We find this no- 
where else, and it is very precious, because it 
expresses, somewhat ideally, the central concep- 
tion of a republic, — an equality at bottom which 
the accidents of birth and money should not be 
allowed to disturb. 

Some free spirits throw themselves too far the 
other way, and instead of caring for the ap- 
proaches of politeness and thoughtful courtesy, 
appoint themselves judges and critics of their 
brother-man, — an office to which they are in no 
wise invited. This simplicity of relation between 
man and man makes an American in Europe, 
where he finds it wanting, uncomfortable. He 
misses the familiar contact with a fellow-creature 
without regard to his position. He thinks the iso- 
lation to which these foreigners retire is insulting 
to himself. He has not been taught, in the large 
freedom at home, that the first right of the indi- 
vidual — sweeter far than the franchise — is 
of his own privacy, to enjoy escape from the 
13 



194 CHEQUER-WORK. 

interviewer, and to modestly possess the powers 
or the wealth heaven has conferred, without see- 
ing the castle of his mind invaded, and his mental 
or worldly goods snatched by importunate out 
siders. 

No American stays at an English country 
house without finding himself invited to visit 
historic sites, crumbling castles, ruined abbeys ; 
and, as he explores them, he gets a satisfaction 
nothing else could give. They are his castles, 
his abbeys, which he has never seen till new. An 
ancestor of his perhaps lived thereabouts ; at all 
events he feels a proprietorship, and a desire for 
repossession which old ruins in France and Italy 
do not suggest. 

Many of these sites are used now for picnics. 
The owner permits this easily, when he does not 
live there ; but when he still resides, as does the 
descendant of Belted Will Howard, in his border 
castle, through his good nature he may see ou 
holidays an invasion of his grounds from the 
neighboring town. It is as if the turbid wave of 
the great ocean beyond, which calls itself the 
people, broke at the foot of these feudal towers. 
The sight of it suggests much, for we know that 
such invasion, seemingly the result of courteous 



RAMBLING IN ENGLAND. 195 

hospitality, is gaining everywhere. The new 
growth must supplant the old, and round all these 
hoary relics, whether material and only upheld 
by a conservatism which new belief is eating to 
the core, or the mossy fortresses where old dog- 
mas entrench themselves, all is to melt and dis- 
appear before the encroaching march of time. 

But of these excursions from the country 
house, none fascinate the American more than 
those to battle-fields. For not only has Shakes- 
peare written over again England's history to his 
imagination, but he feels in such places her great 
river of life diverted foaming from its course, or 
leaping opposing barriers, and somehow, through 
strain and effort, bearing safely to his feet, 
though the roses of York and Lancaster drown 
in blood, the gracious rose of freedom. 

Bosworth Field was at a convenient distance 
from the manor I was staying at. Few mod- 
ern battle-fields can be taken in at a glance, 
and thus made intelligible. The space forbids it. 
Modern artillery separates instead of uniting the 
confronted hosts. But at Bosworth, as at Mara- 
thon, there was the real shock of armies, and all 
as if on a play-ground with toy-soldiers. There 
was the hill where the tent of Richard was 



196 CHEQUER-WORK. 

it 

pitched. We could guess the very spot. And 
there it was, while his weary men slumbered, that 
those ghostly premonitions of doom, that antici- 
pation of the judgment day, " struck more terror 
to the soul of Richard than twenty of their 
swords." In the morning light, as we drew up 
our horses where the future king of England hung 
upon the crest on Eichard's right, waiting like a 
haggard to pounce with safety on the defeated 
foe, in fancy we could see the battle engaged in 
the plain below. So melodramatic and splendid 
a figure does Richard make, and the decoration 
here is so satisfactory, it was difficult not to 
think of it all as a great scenic display ; and 
imagine, amid the clumps of spears, the leathern 
jerkins and homely attire of the men-at-arms. 
Those " supes " are always ready in the world's 
great theatre, for threepence a day, to do the kill- 
ing and being killed, while among them gleam the 
tossing plume, the shining armor, and the mas- 
sive destrier of the splendid gentleman of the 
time, as unlike the poor pawns of the front line 
as are the ivory personages of Indian chess-boards 
to their humble soldiers. The sinister figure of 
Richard, scowling through his tangled and 
swarthy locks, the stage-ermine of his kingly 



RAMBLING IN ENGLAND. 197 

robe flying from his shoulders, would persist in 
bringing to the mind's eye the elder Booth rag- 
ing about the field, and croaking words of bad 
augury to his shuddering followers and the indig- 
nant heavens above him. When Henry struck 
his battle, pouring like a mountain torrent at 
right angles with the struggling hosts, Richard 
was driven far to the left of his first position, 
and there, to this day, is Dickon's Well. 

How theatric it all is ! We can see him there, — 
soiled, panting, weary, — glad from his own or a 
soldier's helmet to drink, and so for a moment to 
cool his fiery spirit ere it departed on the journey 
no man knows whither. 

Dr. Johnson loved the country as seen from 
the windows of a post-chaise, and no wonder. 
There is something lordly and triumphal about 
it ; and this in his time must have compensated 
for the inferior roads. But since then there has 
been a clever Englishman who could look down 
upon the roads made by General Wade with the 
contempt that gentleman had for those before 
his time, and people could say, instead of the old 
distich : — 

" If you 'd seen these roads before they were made, 
You would lift up your hands and bless Marshall Wade." 



198 CHEQUER-WORK. 

" You called those things roads, 
And thought that you had 'em, 
But the best were not fit 
For the feet of Macadam." 

It seems cruel that just as Macadam hadl 
brought his system to perfection and dowered: 
all Europe with it, his nose should be put out of' 
joint by the railway. It was. a prodigious waste; 
of material and force. In America I only know 
one bit of perfect macadamized road, that to thej 
reservoir and round it, near Boston. But alii 
the roads of Europe, for twenty years before 
railways, were perfect. The preparation of a 
road-bed, slightly arched, and the juncture of lit- 
tle cubes of granite, almost like mosaic, was not 
well carried out here. To this day Irishmen can 
be seen hammering, at their sweet will, lumps of 
stone on the road-bed they are to occupy, careless 
of shape and size. The beautiful roads of Europe 
had cantonniers who understood this better, and 
broke the stone at a distance from the road, while 
at intervals beside it, ready for use, were little 
pyramids of these cubes. 

Democracy may help the many, but it abates 
the pride of tlie few. A hundred men may be 
hurled, as from the cannon's mouth, from city to 



EAMBLING IN ENGLAND. 199 

city, passing through huge caravansaries as un- 
noticed as motes in the beam. But in the olden 
time, travelling by post was a princely pleasure, 
and even the stage-coach was not without its 
grandeur. Something of the charm of both still 
lives in the pages of Dickens, to show the present 
generation what they have lost ; but once, re- 
ferring to the delight of travelling by the old 
stage-coach, Dickens said to me in reply : " Yes, 
it was all very well, very charming in memory, 
but do you suppose you could now go back and 
endure the constraint of the knife-board, and the 
slowness of the pace ? I fear not." And yet I 
have known, till recently, English amateurs of 
posting days — old gentlemen who hated to give 
up — studying the post routes of England, and 
contriving little excursions over the beautiful roads 
where post-horses were still to be found. In the 
same spirit of recovery, there are coaches yet 
drawn to Brighton and several suburbs of Lon- 
don by glossy thorough-bred teams, and instead 
of the old coachman, sucking a straw, one is 
driven, perhaps, by a lord with a rose in his but- 
ton-hole. 

The gentleman who was our host in Warwick- 
shire was the secretary of the Shakespeare So- 



200 CHEQUEE-WORK. 

ciety, and he drove me over to Stratford-on-Avon. 
Of course he could take me everywhere. But 
one thing I missed on account of the rain. That 
was a visit to the place of the Lucys, which looks 
so imposing from the road through its gigantic 
iron ^ate. We intended to go there, but the rain 
prevented. The oldest of the line., a lady, had 
recently said to my friend :" People talk a great 
deal about William Shakespeare : all I know is, 
he never was a good friend to our family ! " and 
thus narrowed the universal poet down to the 
gossip of a village scandal. Some critics now-a- 
days are quite taking the old lady's view, and 
would like to see him condemned to the stocks, at 
petty sessions, for appropriating the goods of Lord 
Bacon. In his day, that great man himself ap- 
propriated a good deal of the property of other 
people, but in his lifetime he never ventured on ' 
such a coup as since death his friends have done 
for him. 

As we returned home we met a powerfully 
made man on a fine horse, and silent greetings 
were exchanged. The gentleman certainly looked 
proud and mournful. 

" I will tell you all about it," said my friend, 
" after we have seen 'the dogs." 



EAMBLING IN ENGLAND. 201 

Before long we came to a fine estate with a 
superb house for dogs. In it were a dozen liver- 
colored pointers of great price. We entered to 
caress and admire them, noticing a little window 
by the door to supply them with air, and many 
other canine comforts. " It is a sad tale," said 
my host, " a story of a cruel mistake which has 
embittered the life of the gentleman we met. 
Like many another Englishman, he was haughty 
and reticent, living much within the privacy of 
his grounds and the seclusion of his own thoughts. 
But he had married the beauty of the county, 
and thereby general attention for a time was 
drawn to him. After the wedding festivities, fol- 
lowed a domestic calm so great that not a whisper 
reached the world outside ; but suddenly that 
house was blighted. From mouth to mouth, with 
the swift flight of evil news, spread through the' 
shuddering county dreadful rumors of cruelty and 
outrage. It became known that the bride for 
long had patiently endured in silence treatment 
which at last grew insupportable. Growing as 
it rolled, the scandal accumulated till, like an 
avalanche, it fell upon the family and buried it in 
ruin. Particulars of ingenious cruelty were nar- 
rated, among which was prominent a story of the 



202 CHEQUEE-WOEK. 

lady's imprisonment among his ravening dogs, left 
there alone and friendless, and this perhaps agi- 
tated the neighbors most. Branded as a monster, 
the whole county fell away from the tyrant when 
the last consummation was known. It appeared 
then that the lovely bride, unable to endure longer 
her trial, wrote to her two brothers, appealing for 
help and disclosing every thing. As her life was 
in danger they acted at once. One brother, at 
the coming hunt, kept close to the husband, 
securing his absence for many hours from home. 
The other brother came in a carriage to the 
house, flew to his sister's room, enveloped her in 
blankets, and carried her away to the home she 
had once known. There, overcome by suffering 
and distress, she slowly sank, without strength to 
continue her explanations or further particulars 
of what she had suffered. Then the solitude, 
the isolation, around the guilty man became com- 
plete. He made no effort to vindicate himself, 
but lived silent and haughty in the shadow which 
had fallen on him. But my host and a noble 
friend of his, who in many things led the county, 
had their suspicions awakened that all was not as 
the public, credulous of evil, had believed. No 
help could they get from the gentleman accused ; 



EAMBLING IN ENGLAND. 203 

but, by persistent and skilful investigation, they 
were at last able to place before the astonished 
county a consistent and simple explanation which 
brought shame to many a cheek and silenced 
for a time the loquacity of Mrs. Grundy herself. 
Thus it finally appeared that never lived together 
a couple more devotedly attached, that their 
union was perfect, and needed not that the happy 
lives they led should be strengthened by outside 
additions. They lived within themselves and for 
themselves. But by the law of a fatal malady 
the lady, at the birth of her first child, felt her- 
self so disturbed, so changed, that those she loved 
dearest seemed to her foes, and every act, even 
those of kindness, were read backward, as proofs 
of enmity. The poor lady was as fond of the beau- 
tiful dogs as was her husband ; she liked to linger 
and caress them, and on one occasion her hus- 
band said, " As you love them so well, enjoy their 
society. Good-by ! " and then, turning the key, 
looked in on her merrily through the open win- 
dow. A moment more, and on her husband's 
arm she walked laughing to the house. Under 
these cruelly erroneous impressions she wrote to 
her brothers. They snatched her at once from 
her " heartless tormenter," who loved her really 



204 CHEQUER-WORK. 

as he did his own soul. The exposure ripened 
her illness, and a fatal termination followed before 
she knew the sad things she had written or was 
able to reveal the truth. 

I venture thus to recall, for the sake of the 
weighty moral it conveys, a county tragedy of 
long ago, trusting that the hearts then wounded 
have healed, and finding my excuse for this name- 
less narrative in the impressive lesson it teaches 
all of us when we too hastily condemn our fellow- 
creatures. 




VIII. 

AT THE POLLARDS. 



VIII. 

AT THE POLLARDS. 

"Sub tegmine fagi." 



TT was very pleasant at that time at " The Pol- 
lards." The season was not quite over in 
London, but the birds there had become restless 
in their gilded cage. People were tired of the 
debates in the " Times," the stately and hot din- 
ners, and the routs where the packing was so 
close that Lady Cheeseborough had thoughts of 
sending to Paris for an emballeur. The ther- 
mometer of the London season hangs from the 
trees at the side of the " Ladies' Mile," in that 
lovely park where more and better horseflesh can 
be seen than in the rest of the world beside. A 
practised eye could find, like the marks of a ther- 
mometer, gaps in the swaying line of Amazons 
and centaurs, and with a sigh surmise what had 
happened. The sigh was for tlie good time end- 
ing, and this hint that London was thinning. 



208 CHEQUER-WORK. 

This escape from the town to the country, with 
the contrast it brought, was delicious to all. 
And what is there like a summer twilight in 
England, the long crepuscular euthanasia of the 
day ? It is long enough to make you forget that 
it ever will end, and yet with no over-brightness, 
no dazzle, no dripping dews. 

And so they found themselves under the fa- 
mous beeches which carried up their roof of ver- 
dure so high that the birds at the top had a 
seclusion of their own, while the party at the foot 
of the trees had theirs. The place was called 
The Pollards from some long ago, when, at its 
purchase by the ancestors of the present owner, 
the banks of the little river, which was really 
only a big trout-brook, were shorn of their 
streaming willow-stems, thus opening to the win- 
dows of the house great stretches of fresh green, 
over which the shadows of the clouds raced and 
ran, sponging out suddenly the lights, obliterat- 
ing a flock of sheep to let the sun strike full upon 
the dewy roses hanging and climbing round the 
whitewashed walls of a cottage, or burnishing a 
field of wheat till it lay a cake of gold amid the 
verdure. 

The house at The Pollards was full ; but that 



AT THE POLLARDS. 209 

was not enough for the hospitable soul of Lady 
Florimel Spenser, and so the train brought and 
took birds of passage who fluttered round the 
spot as if it were a dove-cote. No one quite 
knew who might turn up at lunch. But at 
evening it was mostly the same circle which 
re-assembled under the beeches. One or two 
gentlemen anglers — who were staying at the 
Weir, a mile or two down, a little inn where the 
good fishing, the society of birds, gave to their 
book and cigar a relish of the finest — would 
drop in occasionally to the circle fbut as such are 
mostly of the silent order, as becomes piscator, 
they counted for little in the evening's entertain- 
ment. Foreign gentlemen, a writer for the " Re- 
vue des deux Mondes," or a Hungarian noble- 
man, who had come to England to get saddles for 
his horses, and himself a proper hunting equip- 
ment at Poole's, were glad to get this glimpse of 
English country-life and one of its famous parks. 
However heterogeneous the elements of this 
society were, it had an ease, a confidence in an 
equality of culture and courtesy, which fused it 
harmoniously together. The bit of Attic salt 
here, the vinegar of sarcasm and the solid pieces 
of discussion or story-telling were treated by the 



210 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

accomplished hostess as if she were a cordon bleu 
who knew how to spice the social dish to per- 
fection. She held her guests pleasantly in hand, 
to change the metaphor, and with one snap of 
her eye put this or that pony to the front ; or, 
when she had caught some conversational lion, 
gave him his head and allowed him the running, 
which he managed with a Parole-like speed across 
all literatures. 

So when the boys had been sent to bed, and that 
dreadful Mr. Duplex had been induced to go off 
with his puns somewhere else, after the shawls 
and wraps had been placed under and around all 
who desired ; after the attentive flunkey, whose 
livery was nearly as tight on him as a green 
gage's skin to it, had, without snapping in two, 
rescued the remainder of the strawberries and 
cream and claret-cup from the grass, and trium- 
phantly carried them off. Lady Florimel prepared 
to marshal her guests and shape the order of their 
going. 

" Come, good people," she said, " we have not 
much time for a symposium, and I hate repe- 
titions. We have had science enough, I think, 
and to spare. We have repeatedly walked away 
between the pieces of a crumbled world. Herr 



AT THE POLLARDS. 211 

Upsetter and Dr. Nosebud have depressed us to the 
point they desired ; they have taken away every 
hope and every belief, and have left us hanging like 
butter-pails, cool and comfortable in the well of 
truth. All that is very nice, but surely we have 
had enough of these horrors. I agree that it is 
a new sensation. As the Italian bourgeoise likes 
to cry her eyes out at the theatre, the better to 
relish at home her midnight salad, so this new 
fillip to our souls, this fashionable shudder at an 
empty universe, is piquant, if not proper. 

" I wanted to get my chicks together earlier, but 
that dreadful Duplex would not subside. He is 
your uncle, I know," she added, turning to Mary 
Percival, a fair American girl, who was busy put- 
ting a violet into the button-hole of her next neigh- 
bor, " but whatever is it that makes you Americans 
pun so dreadfully ? I suppose it is your famili- 
arity with percussion-caps and revolvers : I am 
sure to me they are much the same. There was 
a man here from Philadelphia the other day who 
emptied all the chambers of his brain into mine, 
snapping such shots that I thought I should ex- 
pire." 

" Lady Florimel," said the little girl, " I am 
an American, and I never pun. I am afraid 
I don't know how." 



212 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

" And may you never learn, my dear. I am 
sure you are expecting me to quote Dr. Johnson 
about punning, but I shan't. But I must say we 
are going all wrong, and it 's my fault. No tiffs, 
no rubs of any sort, to-night ; all sweetness and 
compliment. It is so tiresome, after all, to find 
yourself putting everybody in shadow by getting 
to the front with your personality as if that were 
the law to the rest. It disposes of your neighbor 
so comfortably, for when he is in shadow his 
brightness is all gone, while we are spared the 
bother of sympathy or the duty of equality. I 
must say I think my people are about the clev- 
erest at this extinguisher process of any. We 
pretend to take England seriously, and try to 
believe that it is the pattern nation; that the 
utmost others can do is to copy it badly. We 
do not disguise, even in our opera-bouffe, how 
greatly to our credit it is to be an Englishman. 
The only serious air in delightful ' Pinafore ' 
is to that effect. Now I thought it would be 
much nicer this evening, if we must talk about 
each other, ourselves and our nations, that we 
should confine ourselves to what we can think 
to say as good of each other, not false compli- 
ments but true. Self-praise gets sour by keeping. 



AT THE POLLAEDS. 213 

Shut within ourselves, self-esteem ferments and 
troubles us, but all can hear with pleasure what 
flatters them, if it comes from impartial lips and 
is sweetened by the honey of kind intention." 

Count Antinor Mirbel, who spoke English, 
dressed English, and owned English race-horses, 
exclaimed at once, — 

" That pleases me mostly. It gives me chance 
to find English words of correctness. It is quite 
what we call poUtesse ; and I who adore your 
nation " — With an imperial gesture, Lady Flor- 
imel repressed the elastic creature. " Come, 
count," she said, " no exaggeration. We Eng- 
lish don't love sweetmeats, and I fear you will 
cloy us before we have begun." 

" No, count," with a simper, added the pretty 
Miss Percival, " now don't slop over." 

" My child ! " said Lady Florimel, severely. 

" Why should not I be allowed to talk in my 
American way, and the Frenchman, too, in his ? 
You see you snub us while pretending to throw 
wide your doors for the new method. I suppose 
if we do try to say civil things of each other it 
must be in our own way." 

" Well," said her ladyship, with a sigh, " I sup- 
pose people are incorrigible." 



214 CHEQUEE-WOEK. 

"All but the English," saucily added ' the 
American girl, " but you know you are perfect ! 
One of our young writers ventured to suppose 
that a duchess might be without a taste in dress, 
and you should have seen how the frown of all 
England darkened round him. The press con- 
sidered there was nothing sacred if such things 
went on. The real truth of the matter is," she 
continued, " we Americans are too good-natured 
by half. Our unwillingness to wound makes us 
unjust to our own convictions and to the position 
we hold as a nation in the world. Father, please 
tell the good people about us." 

"No, dear, I think you are off the track al- 
ready. You are repelling an attack on your 
country when no one has assailed her. We are 
so touchy that we invent an annoyance when we 
can't find one. I see Count Mirbel, like a grey- 
hound in the slips, is dying to be off with his eulo- 
gium. Please, count, bring us into line with our 
hostess's proposal, and let us hear one nation 
praise another." 

" Yes ; I shall praise the English, for I love 
them much. I come here every spring a little, 
and with such pleasure. Here I sleep so strong, 
so deep, in the great bed with the four masts. 



AT THE POLLAEDS. 215 

And the young woman with the hot water comes 
to me like a watch and says to me, ' Muffins will 
be cold, sir ; you had better get up.' And the 
handsome men, the handsome women, and the 
handsome horses in the park. How this enthu- 
siasms ! I say, where is Phidias now, with his 
Panathenaic frieze ? Oh ! England is the classic 
country ! It is Greece and Rome together. At 
home, a little spot like Athens, but its conquests, 
like those of Rome, stretching to the world's end. 
We are so volage, so light ! If we conquer a 
place, we do not keep it ; even in misfortune we 
joke, while the English do not joke even when 
happy. 

" And the people here. Is it disrespectful and 
quarrelsome ? No. Even when starving it will 
put up no barricade. By its humility it could 
teach my countrymen much. And the fine coun- 
try houses with the large trees, like this. How 
we lie on the grass and are happy ! I take the 
huge journal of London, and put it over my head, 
and sleep on the grass ; then I dream I am an 
Englishman, and I feel coming into my brain 
reports of the little Engiands everywhere, mis- 
sions to the Zulus, and then their wars with them ! 
I think I pull a string and the Khedive rolls his 



216 CHEQUER- WOEK. 

ejes in Egypt, and then another, and the Sultan 
like Punch, bounces out of his box to fall on his 
old nose. 

" A member of the Institute, he says to me, 
' A Frenchman ! Bah ! He is the slime of the 
boulevards. He do not know the German map ; 
he only know enough to laugh and say sauer 
kraut and pots sacrament ! ' Now the wise man 
should learn to laugh at himself, his country, and 
his religion, that he may show himself a real citi- 
zen of the world. 

" And they talk of our cuisine ! How much 
better the simple fare of England — its great 
rdti — its sanguine beefsteak ! We have got 
that now very red and bloody at our cafSs, but 
I confess I do not like well your vegetables 
boiled in water, and your queer coffee." 

Baron Bodwitz, who had listened with impas- 
sive face, and erect as a ramrod, to his lively 
neighbor, whispered to an Italian prima donna, — 
who was English for three months, to live com- 
fortably in deshahilU on maccaroni al sug-o at 
discretion for the rest of the year, — "He a citi- 
zen of the world, not much ! He is an English- 
man as much as I am a Frenchman. He must 
be superficial even in what he loves best. We 



AT THE POLLAEDS. 217 

feel, indeed, that he is too happy for a man so 
much subjugated. He will not stay as uncom- 
fortable as we could wish. He even has the im- 
propriety to be rich when we have ruined him." 

This was said, of course, sotto voce, but the 
sparkling Italian answered him so that all might 
hear. 

" Yes, our friend here confesses himself to be 
volag-e. He would like to mend his fault, and 
so studies the seriousness of England. Each in 
his turn ; and we look to you, Herr Bodwitz, to 
replace France at the festival of nations. We 
rely upon you Germans to make good the throne 
you have usurped. We, before, were all depend- 
ants on France for our wines, our fashions, our 
theatre. I doubt not you are busy with the 
creation of substitutes for these among your- 
selves. Remember you have Goethe, and be 
encouraged to seek for the sparkling and witty 
vaudeville. Find some noble German dame who 
shall strike terror into the heart of Worth by a 
grace and elegance which shall have the banks of 
the Spree for their birthplace, and teach the pupils 
of Kaulbach to break up their massive genius 
into little attractive bits of color, or sweet, simple 
transcripts of nature on land and sea. 



218 CHEQUER-WORK. 

" No one seriously in this age can believe in 
the blunt brutality of the bayonet. The man 
you have run through despises you, as you do it, 
for an anachronism which is without excuse. 

" And they tell me you have schools. I hear 
you have students who will eat away like mites 
the whole inside of a library, and shine with all 
the plenty they have assimilated. Yet your peo- 
ple lend themselves to this mistake. Why in 
heaven the poor farmers prod and shoot down 
each other to gratify you wohlgebome gentle- 
men, I can't imagine ! 

" Don't look at me as if I were a nihilist, but 
much as I adore Heine, and love Uebfrauenmilch, I 
can't quite enjoy you till, as I said, you have 
made good your right to stand before France, the 
world's favorite. I suppose we artists, homeless 
and ever on the wing, are the real citizens of the 
world, — at least as impartial as any." 

A guitar crept out of the grass, an unobserved 
hand held it, and as the first tinkle touched the 
musical chord of all, Lady Florimel cried, " Yes, 
yes, make amends to us for the poverty of your 
compliment to Germany, and to Herr Bodwitz 
as well, by singing to us one of those lovely lieder 
of Schumann and so fetch us to that common 



« AT THE POLLAEDS. 219 

country where speech does not wrangle and scold, 
which has a language common to all nations — 
the great school-mistress of our time, whose 
doctrine of love and sympathy is sadly needed." 

Thus entreated, the handsome Italian breathed 
her rich and tender song, which, if all did not 
understand, they felt. Its vagueness was not 
without its charm. Sentiment, feeling, lived in 
it. It seemed the utterance of the fair-haired, 
passionless North — intellectual, introspective, 
even to morbidness. It held the quality which 
gives its sorrowful earnestness to northern Chris- 
tianity. 

And so the singer felt it ; for, stretching her 
dimpled arm to seize the guitar, and flashing the 
white of her teeth as the wave off Capri will 
break the sunny blue with a line of white, and 
throwing back her head till the ivory of her 
nervous throat undulated with its power, she 
sang now a barcarole of such joyous strength, 
such sensuous, unintellectual, childish feeling, 
that a flush of warmth passed round the circle ; 
and as it soared skyward it startled the rooks 
which had returned to roost, and sent them, in 
ebon eddies, curving beyond the trees. 

Lady Florimel bowed her thanks, but the 



220 CHEQUER-WOEK. ♦ 

American girl kept striking her pretty p^lms 
together, till her hostess inquired, — 

" What is that for, my dear ? " 

" Why, of course you know it is to have her 
sing it over again. In America it is thought 
almost indecent to let a singer off without a 
repetition. I have seen there a whole opera 
repeated, bit by bit, and thus we get twice as 
much fo^r our money as we paid for." 

Her father. Colonel Percival, with a laugh, 
added : " Perhaps in our wild forests our two most 
luxurious growths are shaking of hands and this 
national encore. The hand-shaking is sublime. 
It allows every voter to handle his president, and 
to make him feel by absolute contact that he is 
only his puppet. I suppose if the master of 
ceremonies at Washington, its Polonius, the 
grand chamberlain, should suggest that, for the 
future, respect for his high position might make 
the President keep his hands in his pockets, 
there would be an explosion from the people at 
this infringement of one of its dearest privileges." 

And brightening up at the thought of the con- 
trast, the good Colonel added, — 

" How differently you work it all here ! Not 
only you won't shake hands all round, but you 



AT THE POLLAEDS. 221 

won't even always get an introduction to your 
next neighbor at dinner. It seems to us dread- 
fully vulgar, this mutual fear of contamination. 
It is fun to sit next to some person at dinner 
and try to make believe that he is not worthy of 
your acquaintance. I have known Americans 
who never speak first to an Englishman, and 
others, who wish to make an acquaintance, set 
about it with as much strategy as Yon Moltke 
does a campaign. As they say at sea, the great 
art is to get the weather-gage. Impress your 
companion by innuendo, or even blunt assump- 
tion, with your superiority to him, and he is quite 
comforted, and will deal with you as you desire. 
So foolish are we Americans that we even speak 
to our servants with consideration, and give an 
order as if we were asking a favor. 

" I have sometimes thought," he went on, 
" that the pride you English cultivate in your 
great houses and dreary etiquette is quite killed 
with us by our bright sunshine and universal 
friction. Pride implies a certain loneliness. It 
desires it in the midst of numbers, but no pride 
reconciles an American to lonelhiess. With a 
continent to lose himself in, he seeks fellowship 
as a matter of course. The solitude an English- 



222 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

man seeks comes to us with the sense of the lone- 
liness of woods, and the absence of society and 
a market. You can hardly imagine how only 
half at home we feel as yet in those dreadful 
spaces of ours we are trying to knock into 
shape. And have not we done it ? — making the 
whole continent tingle with a common life, sen- 
tient throughout, a million threads bearing mes- 
sages to the universal brain. 

" But we do feel at home in England, or rather 
we should if you would only let us. Your very 
fields, your historic sights and castles, are society. 
We are content to ramble, and give our blood its 
taste of the old home. It comes nearer our 
nerves than it does to yours. It supplies in us 
a vacuum which we long to have filled, while you 
are so biases by familiarity, that you will find more 
American names in your country hotel books 
than you will of your own. 

"You are ever so kind to us, and we get on 
famously. Of course we understand that you 
think, as we have no lords to knock us about, we 
do not really amount to much. I think a Duke 
of the Adirondacks, or a Count Sebago, would go 
a long way to put us right in your eyes. And 
we fellows, being used to the best, do strike for 



AT THE POLLARDS. 223 

your court-cards, and like a game of poker with 
them. What people do not have at home, of 
course they come abroad to see ; and then these 
swells, having nobody over their heads, are more 
like our folks than the rest. I have known some 
of our people to quite sink under the rough 
handling, the brutal unsympathy of some of your 
cocky manufacturers and merchants. They abso- 
lutely wanted imagination enough to conceive 
of a life that was not their own. It was like 
going into a damp cellar with only a big bull-dog 
in it. 

" But I guess we are getting on, all of us, better 
together every day. We, united, are bound to 
whip the world, and make English the universal 
language. You see we go off sometimes at half- 
cock, and are too tonguey by lialf , so I'll pull up." 

LadyFlorimel had listened attentively, and at the 
end of his rapid discourse, took from a Japanese 
box of ivory, encrusted with bronze, a cigar, 
which she handed graciously to the Colonel, say- 
ing,— 

" I fear you will not like it much ; it is too 
light for you. Americans seem to be very dif- 
ficult in cigars, and England, I suppose, is too 
damp to keep them good. And that is the rea- 



224 CHEQUER-WORK. 

son, you know, why we can't let you smoke in 
our drawing-rooms. Tlie smell clings to the cur- 
tains, and sometimes lasts for weeks. I have 
heard that in America, in your delicate dry air, a 
dozen gentlemen can be smoking, and an hour 
afterwards the room be as fresh as possible. If 
the same cigar is so different in the two coun- 
tries, is it very wonderful that human beings, 
who are more sensitive than a weed, should feel 
differently — have their nerves pitched to a dif- 
ferent key ? Each of us, I imagine, is the logic 
of our situation. That grayness, that modera- 
tion, that cloudiness, you- complain of in us, what 
is it but a reflection from our skies, and our 
nature, which is full of half-tones ? 

" The south of Europe gesticulates. All would 
think an Englishman, behaving so, drunk or . 
crazy. You seem to us to wear the flesh off your 
bones in the pursuit of money ; but I think 
probably that in so doing you but reflect the 
electric activities of cloudless skies, and the 
sleepless movement of variable days. 

" We ought to be complements of each other. 
Our differences we should learn to share for our 
mutual advantage. Though, as if by chemical 
antagonism, we feel each a shock in the other's 



AT THE POLLARDS. 225 

presence, familiarity takes us behind this and 
shows us that blood relationship shared by no 
other people. 

" And did you never notice, as somebody once 
said, ' I suppose everybody is a bore to some- 
body ; ' how each nation, like a cock, only looks 
and crows his best on his own dung-hill ? A 
Frenchman often makes -you smile in Regent 
Street, he looks so little at home ; and I confess 
to blushing at the ill-dressed, gawky country- 
people of naine I met at the late Exposition in 
Paris. 

" One expression of yours. Colonel, startled 
me, and I must think it over. I dare say we lay 
too much stress on social distinctions, on the lit- 
tle machinery of etiquette, which, while keeping 
ranks apart, makes all run smoothly. You 
thought of it as vulgar, and I know what you mean. 
Certainly a salon, as you see in Paris, every- 
where should be a republic, for, without that, in- 
tercourse is constrained and without freedom. 
One of our noblest Englishwomen has said that 
she always thinks of heaven as a republic. But 
it comes hard, after trying so to estabhsh an 
orderly and decorous condition of things, to hear 
it called vulgar. I remember that dreadful word 
16 



226 CHEQUBR-WOEK. 

' snob,' wliich Thackeray branded into the fore- 
head of England, and I see that the creature 
could not exist unless fed from the vulgarity he 
assimilates. I begin to fear, Colonel, that your 
large expansiveness, your beautiful unconscious- 
ness of restraining laws, your good will to all 
men, which self-complacency has sometimes made 
us call (to ourselves) by the same dreadful word 
with which you are marking us, may be a truer 
image of man's mutual intercourse in the future, 
when feudal distinctions are obsolete, and pride 
of rank and pretension, anachronisms. 

" But," continued Lady Florimel, rising as she 
spoke, " the perversity of human nature has made 
my little attempt to extract mutual compliments, 
and to suppress the faulty side, with attention 
only to the merits of each and all, a comparative 
failure. But, made as we are, I fear I was hop- 
ing for too much. At any rate, we have not 
quarrelled, and have enjoyed an evening different 
from the others. 

" And now, as night is invading us with its 
dusky films, and the color is going out of the 
branching tree-tops, while a cottage light gleams 
here and there across the confused and mysteri- 
ous spaces near the river, let us, before we go 



AT THE POLLARDS. 227 

in-doors, put ourselves in unison with night and 
mjsterj ; and therefore, dear Lady Blanche, do 
give us one of those delightful ghost-stories of 
yours, which attracts while it repels, which makes 
us inwardly say ' yes ' while we deny it, to take 
the taste of the day out of our mouths, and by 
its witchery fitly prepare us for the jugglery of 
dreams and that bath into which we dip nightly, 
not rightly knowing if its waters be those of 
Lethe, or of that ocean which ere long shall waft 
us wholly hence." 

Then Lady Blanche, with suitable accent, and 
a face that, relieved against the darkening trees, 
was white with spiritual terror, perplexed, fright- 
ened, and amused her little auditory, which, 
when she had done, moved towards the cheerful 
lights of the great house before them in thought- 
ful silence. 



IX. 

AN IDEAL OF THE FUTURE. 



IX. 

AN IDEAL OF THE FUTURE. 



TDTJNCH not very long ago told us of the Eng- 
lish First Lord of the Admiralty's visit to 
Liverpool, where he made a speech. Mr. Goschen 
told the merchants there to cultivate the imagina- 
tion, for this would sweeten the harshness of the 
practical mind. And we have read since, in west- 
ern papers, of something more than the harshness 
of the practical mind ; of a brutality of interfer- 
ence in our circulation, a self-consuming greed, 
which of course destroys its own object as it 
would invalidate contracts and roughly handle 
credit, the mimosa of civilization, which shuts its 
leaves at a hint of peril. 

In the speech, and in the newspaper articles, is 
implied a danger for the future of the world, as 
every one may see. Not Sir Launcelot, nor even 
Don Quixote shall then be the hero of the hour, 



232 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

but that abnormal being, the.practical man. He 
is evolved, at last from the crusader, the knight- 
errant, and the courtier. This modern man's 
life turns upon no childish credulity, no stimulus 
he finds behind his ears. The pivot has moved 
forward of the ear and has its home in acquisi- 
tiveness. Not now do half a million men march 
to the Holy Land in iron for a sentiment ; but 
many times that number are transacting affairs, 
anticipating every human want, in clothing, food, 
and shelter, by an industry which is universal. 

The mart and the mill are now clogged by their 
own richness. The spindle and the water-wheel 
are silent through the completeness of their own 
accomplishment. In short, the modern method 
is over-done ; over-production, over-trading, over- 
spending. The earth travails and groans with 
the new birth. Though timid people cry " When 
will the crisis be over ? " and the more thought- 
ful ask themselves sorrowfully, " Is this check 
now earth's normal condition ? " yet there would 
really seem to be not much mystery in the 
matter. 

Consider the life at the early day, round the 
Mediterranean whence we all are derived. There 
could be no over-trading there. Life's honors 



AN IDEAL OP THE FUTUEE. 233 

were given to the valiant, the man of war. With 
him, the sage, the wise counsellor, and the poet, 
earth's prizes were shared. Machinery was there 
none. All was so simple and worked by hand, that 
few ships were asked for to distribute a country's 
products. Splendor was monopolized by princes 
and nobles. There was no middle class every- 
where demanding a share in what is best, and 
multiplying like the trees of the forest. The 
history of the world then was the history of indi- 
viduals. The people, in the sense we understand 
it, can hardly have been said to exist. 

What the race then suffered from most were 
war and pestilence. Nature was struggling to 
find her fittest survivor. She then didn't coddle 
the imbecile, nor fence round the posterity whose 
inheritance was disease or weakness. 

All these are commonplaces, and yet the 
modern condition of things does not seem to 
strike people as it ought. 

Civilization means not merely what science 
can do for us by increasing our material com- 
forts in a thousand ways, but their distribution 
facilitated as never before. Every thing con- 
curs to push the passion of manufactures and 
commerce to what our fathers would have con- 



234 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

sidered a frenzy. This excess, this fever, is 
everywhere. Life is spent in preparations to live. 
The Latin line comes to mind as we witness all 
this toil of preparation, — 

"Propter vitam Vivendi perdere causas." 

Will the brain of man be able to bear the new 
strain put upon it? For every new discovery 
and invention only quickens the whirl. The 
brain finds a fresh master in each of these im- 
mig-rants to our world. The mechanism we ad- 
mire eats away a part of us by substituting itself 
for lis, and if it abbreviates time and space, we 
share in the hurry. If Clarissa Harlowe is the 
expression of the country indolence of Richard- 
son's time, which could find hours for such pro- 
tracted love-making, look at one of our telegrams 
as a just expression of our own period. As the 
miniature cannot live in the presence of the 
photograph, so the spacious, sentimental, wordy 
letter of our grandmothers cannot live in com- 
pany with the telegram. Style now does not 
saunter to pluck flowers by life's wayside, but 
hisses straight to the brain like an arrow. No 
wonder the London physicians declare that the 
present generation cannot bear the wine and 



AN IDEAL OP THE FUTURE. 235 

alcohol which only cheered their robuster ances- 
tors. It is alarming, but as man has accommo- 
dated himself in previous times to the horrors of 
war and pestilence and survived, so will he, now 
manage, we trust, to adapt himself to the new 
conditions. 

All along the line of man's history he must 
have had an Ideal towards which his motions 
tended. It was made up of the aggregate of his 
desires and beliefs, which drew him forward 
undiscerning what led him, as were the shep- 
herds drawn by a star whose influence they could 
not resist. The poets in their verse reflect 
this Ideal : in Homer it shows itself in the deep- 
hearted, implacable Achilles ; in Dante that star 
has mounted to the zenith, and beckons from the 
home of the immortals ; the mirror of Ariosto's 
verse shows us chivalry armed and in the saddle, 
for an ideal worship of woman to mitigate the 
barbarity of bloody encounters. Every court has 
reflected something of this shifting Ideal. The 
butterfly courtiers of Louis XI Y. fluttered in a 
gaudy decoration which proclaimed the theatric 
Ideal which all then worshipped. Has now 
Victoria of England any such courtly circle, or 



236 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

indeed any court that could be called such by the 
Grand Monarque ? If there be one, its Ideal must 
be that of our time, and point to this Ideal of the 
Future, which alarms us not a little. 

The figure which we faintly see will have 
little time for the measured pleasures and unpre- 
cipitated activities of the past ; if happy, it yet 
will quiver with a sensibility excited from every 
avenue of knowledge and science, — the victor 
victim who bleeds from the spoils he has won, 
the enemies he has vanquished, hunted from a 
solitude he can scarcely find by his own spies and 
messengers, — a palpitating fraction of a world, 
sentient all over, a many-brained and gigantic 
unit, whose pangs as well as pleasures must be 
shared by each of the million brains which com- 
pose it. Will not the Ideal of this future before 
us be sufficiently far from that Greek one which 
infused a calm even into the tumult of passion, 
and figured its gods as living in a state of undis- 
turbed serenity ? 

Yes, that Greek Ideal lies buried deep in Ionian 
skies, — gone to the high places the gods inhabit. 
There it lives majestically tranquil, divinely sad, 
as it looks down upon the feverish tumult of the 
swarming nations. Not like that must be the 



, AN IDEAL OP THE FUTU.RE. 237 

future one, which beckons us to worship at her 
feet. Not manhood or womanhood in repose 
shall be the types she cares for : action, unrestful 
if not feverish activity, will be expressed in her 
features ; her sons, if they wish to win her love, 
must be ever and always men of action. Orestes- 
like, they will fly under the brandished whip of the 
sky, ever farther and faster, till the grave shall fur- 
nish them that repose they have missed till then ; 
and in the hurry of their flight, amid distress and 
perpetual toil for practical results, many things 
once dear to men will be thrown off as too heavy 
to be borne. 

The Ideal of a practical age can hardly be 
burdened with the sentiments, the chivalry, the 
romance, which graced a more languid epoch. 
She will find them in small harmony with the 
•resolute directness of her thought. She will aim 
at a material result and get it, but at the expense 
of losing much which made the higher beliefs of 
a simpler age. Our Era sees contending nations 
snarling like the dogs of the East over the un- 
buried corpse of the death-struck Ottoman, careful 
to parcel out the disjecta membra of her victim 
with nicest adjustment of balance and measure. 
And yet, that part of the Turk's possession, 



238 CHEQUEK-WOEK. 

once the home of the prophets and that Saviour 
of men we are said to honor, brings in painful 
contrast the thought of the Ideal of our day and 
that not unforgotten One for which the ancestors 
of these very men stained the Eastern soil with 
their blood. 

Floods of ink, reams of paper, have been con- 
sumed in writing upon the Eastern question. 
Not a line refers to the sentiment which car- 
ried the Crusaders to Palestine. Such a fact 
brings into lively contrast the ideas of the two 
periods. What a bitter criticism on those who 
died in mistaken devotion to their Lord and 
Master is this indifference of the present gen- 
eration. And yet the childishness of the fathers 
acting on unselfish instinct, reverential and im- 
pulsive, may have been wiser than the crafty 
indifference of our time — for sentiment is the 
sweetener of life. It can mix consolation even 
in the cup of death. The fair Roman girl, given 
to the lions in the Flavian slaughter-pen, felt a 
joy in her martyrdom which only the highest 
sentiment bestows. Clogged with sensual and 
homicidal pleasure, defeated in its desire for en- 
joyment, the soul of the sickening Roman turned 
with the hunger earth cannot appease to the new 



AN IDEAL OP THE FUTURE. 239 

light ill the skies, where he, saw above him the 
cross of Christ. Conquest and all its triumphs, 
the materialism of that age, left the victor un- 
satiated, unhappy, for his life was unsweetened by 
sentiment. So must it be now, if in the whirl of 
business we exile to Heaven the good angels of 
tranquillity, sentiment, and love. This conviction 
makes us see something repulsive, if not abhor- 
rent, in the figure which the life of to-day is 
shaping as its Ideal for the world of the future ; 
makes us dread that embrace too harsh for a 
caress, those iron hands too busy to linger softly 
in our own, that adamantine bxain, which shall 
spin no gossamer web of poetry or romance, and 
upon whose shining haze the morn loved once to 
linger, but a web of steel, whose converging lines 
shall hold with the tenacity of- fate the spoil of 
the hour. That thing men shall love as the ex- 
pression of their success, and it must be houses 
and lands, or mills and machinery, bank stock, 
or the problematical money of the future — for on 
these things now we fasten our affections. But 
will that adored Ideal give her worshippers the 
happiness she promises ? Well may we doubt it, 
for she cannot have it to give : even her very 
look, gleaming from afar, saddens and sharpens 



240 CHEQUER-WORK. 

the faces of her children. All crowds now in 
civilized countries are unpleasant to look upon. 
We miss something nameless — upon these care- 
worn and furrowed faces. To see a look upon 
man's face upon which the eye loves to dwell, 
one must go to the East, — there earth's happy- 
childhood is continued. The brain has not, as 
here, become a throbbing workshop of ideas ; it is 
not there haunted by the ambition which satis- 
fieth not. It is not the place of revel of the imps 
of gain and avarice, but in its blessed ignorance 
-lives, as does the body, by the simplest food. 
Repose, rest, have no terrors to it ; no gad-fly im- 
pulse bids it be up and doing. Men there can 
recline like statues saturated with sunshine, their 
indolence taking the grace denied to Anglo-Saxon 
activity ; and the evident beauty and complacency 
of their attitudes justifying that repose. 

We look at them, and are the happier for it. 
They achieve little, but, careless of this waste of 
life, they see their brother animals about them, 
happy in their thoughtless tranquillity, and are 
content to be like these. Can we say as much 
for the aspect of the victim of our modern strug- 
gle for life, whose existence flies from him at 
every pore, in the effort to realize a happiness 



AN IDEAL OF THE FUTURE. 241 

beyond himself ? And yet our swift days may 
be at a stand-still in comparison with those the 
Future is preparing. 

To match the activity of his servants — the 
telegraph, the telephone, and what other steeds 
Mr. Edison may as yet keep in the stables of his 
fancy — man would seem to need something airier 
than the clogging vesture of flesh he has to-day. 
Poets have imagined such a transition from the 
clumsier to the more delicate forms of matter for 
the future man. The world about us is cer- 
tainly refining. We are getting ashamed of ani- 
mal conditions : not only is wine becoming a 
disorganizer for our tissues, but we crave Flora 
and Pomona for our caterers. With Crabbe's 
school-girl, we loathe the Homeric tables of the 
past: — 

" She minced the sanguine flesh in frustums fine, 
And marvelled much to see the creatures dine." 

But the most striking ingredient in the life of the 
Future may be the principle of co-operation. 
This has hitherto, except in the unique case of 
armies, been used for production only. The 
future may see it employed for purposes of de- 
struction. A million men could build a pyramid ; 
a hundred thousand could run a maimfacturing 
16 



242 CHEQUEE-WOEK. 

town ; but when such numbers combine to 
thwart the capitalist, a power may be built up 
whose edicts, criminal when proposed by one, 
become the law if King Majority say so, however 
dangerous to the State. 

The burden of dissatisfaction in the over-crea- 
tion, over-distribution, and over-use of products 
for the market, is fermenting among the weary 
crowds of Europe and America. The workman 
enriches an empire, but remains poor himself. 
No subtlety of political economy, no submission 
to law, can make either the workman or any 
kind-hearted spectator of the fact submissively 
acquiescent. Though Business has become the 
god of the world, there are mutterings in the 
sky which threaten its empire. It would seem 
that capital should always dictate to labor, but 
everywhere labor is trying to dictate to capital. 
Whether in the shop, the mine, or the mill, such 
dictation arrests the wheels which turn to the 
.profit of all parties ; and the workman makes 
gains impossible by asking higher wages for him- 
self, thoughtless of the bread he is taking from 
his own mouth. Better that the law should give 
him a larger share in the profits of capital, than 
that, by his action, he should dry up these at their 



AN IDEAL OP THE FUTURE. 243 

source. While he is trying to adjust things be- 
tween himself and his employer, he sees behind 
liim, like wolves in a Siberian landscape, a terror 
to both of them, the vengeful torches of countless 
socialists, who tread upon Malthus and Adam 
Smith, and whose battle-cry is not " Justice," but 
" Injustice and Revenge." 

But whether these factors in the destiny of 
the future may assure success or misery, their 
means will be through the drilled and mancBuvred 
band of association. To what such an instru- 
ment may carry the world, it is hard to predict. 
Wrong cannot, happily, be made right by any 
insolence of a majority. The needle will not 
turn from due north for any scolding or entreaty. 
The dominant party at Washington is now feel- 
ing this. The individual conscience there is 
growing through the efficacy of the protest it is 
making against the iron tyranny of numbers. 
As a boomerang only recoils to strike him who 
trusts to it, so the wrong which the majority 
endeavors to make right by getting it legalized 
sweeps back to overthrow the imprudent ex- 
perimenter. Everywhere the world is so fash- 
ioned that these engineers of evil are 

" Hoist witii their own petard ; " 



244 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

and this certainty, it is which makes wise men 
patient, if not cheerful, when clouds threaten, 
when the waters surge and roar, for thej know 
that the destructive forces, in man as in nature, 

r~liave their appointed limit ; and that Chaos is 

\ never to come again. 



X. 

THE ISLAND OF BOGUSSA. 



THE ISLAND OF BOGUSSA. 



■piLLY BOUNCER was one of the oddest 
"^ fishes out. He was funny, as sometimes 
Americans are, without knowing it. After all, 
the great question with us is how much the 
tuning instrument in the sky has keyed us up. 
Each takes his restlessness according to the bent 
of his faculties ; and, if there be any thing to 
choose, I suppose he may be happiest who moves 
easily in the grooves of routine. With what 
smooth comfort and certainty does the ball on 
the bowling-alley roll down its restraining trough, 
and how foolish the same ball looks when jerked 
sprawling about the floor ! But of course its 
happiest function is when, in another than either 
of these movements, under the guiding will and 
eye, it goes heroically to a ten-strike ! 

No ten-strike being possible for him, Billy 
sprawled about the floor of the world in the wild 



2i8 • CHEQUER-WORK. 

est of evolutions. Restlessness was his normal 
condition, and his propelling power an insati- 
able curiosity, not wholly base, but often in the 
direction of historical and literary questions. 
Still, it was capable of great sacrifices of both 
honor and decency for the sake of its indul- 
gence. He loved to fathom the secrets of the 
world — what impelled to its great actions and 
what explained its obscurest crimes. He had 
something of the soul of a professor wrapped 
in the note-book of an interviewer. Nothing 
daunted him. It was not so much that he evaded 
or surmounted the obstacles which rank and 
privacy presented, as that he was unconscious of 
them. It was the indulgence of intellectual sat- 
isfaction that he thought of, and he believed that 
however men's bodies might be kept apart, their 
minds had a right to come in contact. 

This made him easily a deifiocrat of the demo- 
crats. Objects eminent above the dead plane he 
lived in allured and attracted him. He flew at 
such higher game for the double reason that its 
superiority flattered his vanity, and his principles 
permitted an equality with himself, the subject of 
which felt not always complimented by this con- 
viction. He loved for their own sakes things 



THE ISLAND OF BOGUSSA. 249 

which were extraordinary, exceptional. His im- 
agination demanded them, and, when found, it 
fitted to them like a glove. But sometimes, 
when undiscoverable, his mind, like Shakespeare's 
queen, would " fill out the unsubstantial garment " 
with a reality which was not there. And so, as 
people's faults are the part of them easiest seen, 
he came to be called Billy Bouncer, when his real 
interest was in truth, only that he loved it a little 
highly seasoned. The tales that were told of 
him of course grew by repetition. People cred- 
ited him with all the audacious naivetSs with 
which America astonishes Europe. Tliere was 
not a court he had not visited. At almost every 
one he had been presented. Here and there he 
won back-^tair intimacies with some of the royal 
people. They corresponded with him, and saw 
only his side of acute research and enthusiasm 
for acquisition. Hts belief in the equality of all 
men permitted his approaches to the butlers and 
lackeys of great houses which often led to some- 
thing advantageous. As he did not generally stay 
long in a place, he did not wear out his welcome, 
and that was fortunate for him ; for neither he 
nor the great people would have known what to 
do with each other if his stay had continued. 



250 CHEQUER-WORK. 

And yet he was in some sense a power, giving to 
the royal and princely personages of Europe 
happy suggestions, wise precautions, and talking 
like an expert of the loose joints in the fabric 
which had raised them so high, and whose top- 
pling over looked so imminent. 

His presence was like that of an acid in which 
old formulas dissolved ; but, like his countrymen 
generally, he was no partisan for truth and lib- 
erty ; he only took them everywhere for granted. 
So he went through the decaying timber of musty 
monarchies, the stone of crumbling fortresses, 
the charnel-houses of dead opinions, as the teredo 
through an old ship's beams. He tested and 
tasted their decay, and set some to thinking of 
how to get a new life into them. He dis- 
covered for the Sultan beds of petroleum in one 
of his remoter provinces, and organized a tramway 
to fetch the commodity to market. He discov- 
ered that abandoned mines might still be worked 
to profit, and took a royalty on the labors which 
he could not stop to organize. He sometimes, 
when permitted to ramble everywhere over an old 
castle, brought to light from the garret's rubbish 
a forgotten masterpiece, or, stumbling upon an 
unexplained disconnection in a suite of rooms, 



THE ISLAND OF BOGUSSA. 251 

found, once or twice, old chests, old armor, and 
services of dented silver in closets which had 
once been store-rooms. 

But he was not always the source of such 
good luck to his hosts. He knew most of the 
pallid, slender mediums who terebrate the skies 
as he did Europe, and he brought them to my 
lord's castle, where the fidgets would soon over- 
take the whole family, followed by a conviction 
of the genuineness of these electric novelties, till 
Billy found it easy to induce his friend to dig for 
treasure where the spirits directed. Nor did ,such 
digging prove as fruitful as that suggested to the 
sons by the father in ^sop. They finally came 
back empty-handed home, Billy suggesting as an 
excuse for failure that the conditions were not 
favorable, and the Baron, more certain than ever 
that the devil was in it, efficacious in deception, 
his promises like those of his sisters, the witches 
in Macbeth. 

Billy was an antiquarian. Before Yisconti 
had thought of it, he knew of those huge impe- 
rial slabs of African marble beneath the wave 
of Tiber ; and his predictions of the recovery 
not only of the sacred candlesticks of Solomon's 
temple, but of many a Grecian masterpiece, when 



252 CHEQUER-WORK. 

daylight should search the emptied bed of the 
river, so wrought upon certain leading officers of 
the court at Rome, that the project is still enter- 
tained there, repressed by the acknowledged pov- 
erty of the national exchequer. 

Billy Bouncer had been on an excursion to the 
White Nile, with an officer in the service of 
the Khedive ; and he brought back sketches of 
the tree habitations of a tribe of Simise, whose 
approach, in appearance, gestures, and speech, to 
man, he found described in no book ; but experts 
thought his somewhat vague sketches only indi- 
cated a variety of the chimpanzee, to be found 
occasionally, both at London and Paris, in their 
collections. 

But perhaps his best hit was in Africa, where 
he felt sure that he had discovered the Cave of 
the Seven Sleepers, and had tried to decipher at its 
extremity certain characters which he believed to 
be Greek. He brought away bones, as he 
averred, of a dog which these young men must 
have taken with them, but which Mr. Owen at 
once pronounced those of a jackal. 

It was on his return from this excursion into 
Africa, and along the whole northern shore of 
that continent, hunting often successfully for 



THE ISLAND OP BOGUSSA. 253 

traces of Phoenician emigration and remainders 
of Spanish influence brought back by the Moors 
to Africa upon their return, that he resolved upon 
an exhaustive examination of the ruins these 
Moors had left behind them in Spain. This ex- 
amination he accomplished with considerable suc- 
cess. It is not difficult to trace survivals of 
Moorish words, fashions, and architecture in 
Spain, for the national life has been visibly tinged 
by them. 

It was while investigating a crumbling ruin 
not far from the sea, which betrayed behind its 
Christian architecture the curving lines, the lace- 
work in stone, the horseshoe arch of the followers 
of Mahomet, that our friend Billy Bouncer pro- 
fessed to have met with a singular experience. 
He had wandered down nearly to the sea-shore 
for the purpose of examining a pestilential lake 
whose fetid waters sowed its shores with death and 
disease. He hoped to discover somewhere the 
conduit which he doubted not the Moors had con- 
structed for purposes of irrigation, and show how 
the lake might be drained, the free passage of the 
conduit being re-established. He was baffled, and 
found none. 

He had taken in his hand his carpet-bag, mean- 



254 CHEQUER-WORK. 

iiig to return to Burgos by a train which was due 
in an hour ; but as he looked down upon the 
beautiful blue of that southern sea he saw, made 
still tinier by distance, a little pinnace-like steamer. 
Her steam was up, and she evidently was pre- 
paring to go somewhere. But what riveted 
Billy's attention and decided him was that, lazily 
floating with Iberian grace, he saw his country's 
flag at the stern of the little vessel. The mys- 
tery of its meaning charmed him. He knew 
wherever it went he was at home under those 
folds. Therefore, hastily running down the cliff, 
just as the plank was lifted he jumped on board. 
He asked no questions, spoke to no one, but 
waited and watched. He looked about vainly for 
an American. The crew, in their red caps and 
black whiskers were evidently Spanish, and the 
neglected look of all things, the blurred surface 
of the deck, ropes and rubbish out of place, be- 
trayed the disorder of that Latin race whose 
" home " decidedly is not " upon the deep." 

Billy sat at the stern, letting the odic forces 
draw out his brain and braid it with the twisting 
seas which followed the screw. It made him 
think of Niagara — and of a vacant, blissful hour 
that he had spent, his brain tumbling over and 



THE ISLAND OF BOGUSSA. 255 

dropping with the green flakes of the curving 
water, and floating happy and listless upward in 
the sunlight on the seething foam. It made him 
think, too, of his favorite chair in the New York 
hotel, where the mesmeric scissors of the German 
artist clicked a music which led him into dream- 
land, while through the strands of his brown 
hair, which hung before his eyes, he saw the 
arriving guests and other artists moving dimly, 
like trees walking. 

Something snapped the glassy thread which 
drew him homeward, and turning his head he 
saw that they were arriving. Snatcliing up his 
bag, he moved forward to join the few passengers, 
mostly Spanish, who were going ashore. Just 
then the engineer thrust his head out of his little 
box. Billy at once knew it to be American. A 
certain dry look, fine wrinkles on a coloi'less skin, 
the jaw-bone either side of the chin knife-like in 
its sharpness, the sandy goatee, and the look of 
infinite cleverness in the eye, made him recognize 
a fellow-countryman at ont;e. Turning, and stop- 
ping a moment, he said: "What's up now, and 
where have we got to, and where 's the best 
hotel ? " The engineer grinned from ear to ear 
as he answered : " You '11 find out fast enough, I 



256 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

guess, by your looks ; you are wanted there. 
They'll make you at home firstrate. Got any 
money ? " "A doubloon or two, and a little gold 
and silver besides." " Well, you see that little 
shanty there with the American arms, under 
those of Spain. You must go there and change 
it. Now be off, for we must go back." 

As he spoke, the whizz of escaping steam 
drowned his words, and the silvery column shot, 
feverish and noisy, into the blue. 

Bag in hand, our hero was soon ashore, and, 
turning to the right, stood before a latticed win- 
dow over which was written : " Pay here." On 
his tapping gently, the window flew up, and a 
superb Spanish official in full toggery, his breast 
a constellation of brilliant orders, appeared, but 
behind him peeked a face contrasting with that 
of the official by its decided nationality, and a 
voice said : " You must give up all your specie, 
and take in exchange the notes of our bank 
here." 

" What bank is that ? Are its notes good, and 
do they circulate ? " 

" They circulate everywhere on the island, but 
the government does not allow them to leave it. 
They are very good, for their value is based on 



THE ISLAND OP BOGUSSA. 257 

the total value of the property of the place. I 
will introduce you to the president, whose name 
is in this corner, and he will explain to you the' 
principles of our system. You see it's a hand- 
some bill." 

Billy took one, and "noticed that it was beauti- 
fully printed, with little wavy lines all over it, 
and an eagle, whose lifted but not expanded wings 
made it look fearfully like a buzzard, held in its 
•claws a bunch of olives, thus happily uniting the 
audacity of "American finance with all that could 
be desired of local color. 

The signature of the president, W. S. Tomlin- 
son, had a look of complete authority. Its curves 
swelled and bellied like sails in a wind, and the 
flourish below looked strong as the edict of Fate. 
In graceful arching letters above Billy read, — 

Bank of Bogussa. 

As with solemnity the official handed him a 
roll of this money, it was without much surprise 
that, by a quick calculation in his head, he saw 
that the market value of his specie had appar- 
ently diminished ; but he thought the loss prob- 
ably compensated for by the greater convenience 



258 CHEQUER-WORK. • 

of paper over metal, and the certainty that its- 
value was based upon the total product of the 
island. 

As he turned to leave, he asked of his with- 
drawing countryman : " Where's the best hotel ?" 
To which an answer reached him from the inner 
room : " There ain't but one. You can't miss 
it — just round to the left." Nor was he long in 
finding it. On top of an eminence at a turn in 
the road was a bench, where Mr. Bouncer sat» 
him down to admire the view. It. was a very 
lovely one. There were little promontories, 
clothed with deep green shrubbery, and spring- 
ing from it here and there lofty trees, among 
them Spain's precious and beautiful cork-tree, the 
shadows of all falling almost unwrinkled into the 
glass of a sheltered cove ; and beyond this an 
uncertainty of browns and blues, with here and 
there a point of white as the sun struck some 
whitewashed wall,_ or a confusion of shadows as 
some crumbling ruin intercepted the sunshine; 
It was picturesque, it was southern. The Genius 
of Romance lived there, or had only lately left her 
home. 

Drawing his sight regretfully and slowly back- 
wards, something cut across his dreaming con- 



THE- ISLAND OF BOGUSSA. 259 

tent like a gash. He saw just below him a 
house, a home, but certainly not that of the 
Genius of Romance ; but if she could not have 
felt at home there, he did. He was so glad he 
had come, for now he was sure he should find 
some of his countrymen. Backed up upon what 
looked like the remains of a chapel, of which 
only two or three windows of exquisite work- 
manship remained, he saw a three-storied hotel, 
with an interminable stretch of wooden columns, 
the whole edifice being also of wood. The piazza 
in front was wide, and partially filled with groups 
of women and little children. Here and there a 
lady, differentiated from the more plainly dressed 
nurses by a costume fashioned by Parisian fin- 
gers, sat sewing, but with a supply of magazines 
and newspapers at her side. There were not 
many men there, but something told Billy they 
were not far off : a hum, as if some giant cock- 
chafer were close to his ear, followed by an ex- 
plosion of wooden laughter, stirred remembrances 
in the breast of the listener. So, slipping to the 
rear of the hotel by a little woodland path, its 
sides so enamelled with pink and pale-blue flow- 
ers that he reached the level below with quite a 
liandful of them, he slowly descended. The hum, 



260 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

the laughter grew louder as he advanced, and 
with these came more human sounds, pitched at 
a shrillness of accent not unfamiliar to him. He 
saw before him six bowling-alleys, diverging like 
the sticks of a fan from one central point : that 
point was a little building semi-circular towards 
the alleys, but with a cube-shaped rear. 

Billy was at home at once. He slid quietly 
into the alley nearest him, and slipping off his 
coat, which he hung upon a nail, sat down. Billy 
had a triumph that day. There was no need of 
any introduction. When invited to share in the 
game, like the Discobolos, he stood in so classical 
an attitude, and swung the ponderous lignum- 
vitse with such an audacious but effective curve, 
that every pin leaped to the air at once to do him 
honor. There is a free-masonry that is closer 
than paraphernalia or badges can give. Billy, 
without a word said, showed that he was an 
American, a good fellow, and as smart as the 
best. 

These gentlemen were very pleasant and agree- 
able companions ; perhaps a few wore upon their 
glossy shirt-fronts diamonds of a larger size than 
good taste would dictate ; perhaps the too ample 
figures of some showed a gastronomic breadth 



THE ISLAND OP BOGUSSA. 261 

which must have been attained only by long and 
patient endeavor ; perhaps there was a look about 
the features of some of them, and the hands of 
many, as if there were a certain discord between 
the inner and the outer man. But these things 
you would scarcely notice unless you were as 
critical as a detective. 

At a given moment, all had had enough, and 
they slipped their heated arms back again into 
their suspended coats and shook themselves. By 
a common accord they crossed over to the build- 
ing with a serai-circular front, Billy with the rest. 
Before long somebody said, " What will you 
have ? " Billy eyed the long and familiar marble 
slab, the pigeon-holes with cigars of every shape 
and hue, piles of lemons, olives, oranges, and, mov- 
ing through all, the guardian spirit of the place, a 
mysterious man who, like a juggler, tossed to you 
from his cups " pick me ups " of every hue and 
flavor. There was a cheerful abstraction in his 
eye, — he was in his world of drinks, but not of 
it. You could guess by the clear roses of his 
cheek that he had no share in the hospitality he 
encouraged. He was addressed, however, by all 
comers with a familiarity which he did not resent. 
Billy turned over in his mind flattering memories 



262 CHEQUEE-WORK. 

of much variety, but finally, dariug to decide, 
said : " Give me a Chenango cock-tail." 

The large list of invented beverages was freely 
drawn upon by the jolly crowd. Then they 
wheeled like a flock of pigeons toward the door, 
the foremost simply saying to the mystic servi- 
tor : " The Boss will settle for all." 

Soon after they dispersed, breaking up into 
little groups. Perceiving Mr. Bouncer was a 
stranger, two gentlemen joined him and offered 
to show him what there was to be seen. They 
explained that the square building behind the cir- 
cular bar-room contained, besides billiard-tables, a 
library. Though much of the literature here 
was of the unwholesome sort — Paris doubled by 
New York, the natural mental food of ingenious 
and corrupted youth — it was not wanting in 
theological works, and was especially rich in 
scientific treatises. 

" If a man, you know," said his companion, 
" wants, now, to be up to the times, he must be 
scientific. In fact, it is only through science he 
can hold his own, or get ahead of others. Now 
look at them jugglers. It is not any longer 
quickness of wrist and slight of hand, but elec- 
tricity, pneumatics, and telephone is what does it. 



THE ISLAND OF BOGUSSA. 263 

You come to amuse yourself, and get lessons in 
science. And the same thing at the theatre : 
they can give you a thunder-storm, with flashes 
of lightning, nearly as good as new ; and they 
have red, blue, and green lights, and scenes that 
dissolve, melt, and come again ; in fact, there is 
chemistry and science everywhere. 

" That 's why the ministers are going so be- 
hind. The things they tell about don't admit of 
much help on the scientific side, being about 
things unseen. But they are trying a little for 
it, with views of the Holy Land, and such like, 
thrown on sheets by what they call the stereopti- 
con. If they could get the Egyptian and Jewish 
jugglers to give us a match once more they would 
draw like any thing." 

There was something in the manner of this 
man, so blunt and straightforward, yet with such 
a contrast between his vulgar accent, indifferent 
English, and the interest he betrayed in science, 
that Billy regarded him more narrowly. He was 
a powerful, broad-shouldered, and muscular man, 
with a bristly black beard, cut short, but widen- 
ing his already rather bull-dog jowl ; and his hands 
alone, though massive, showed much pliancy, the 
result of care and some form of exercise. His 



264 CHEQUEE-WORK. 

dress, cut without distinction, had tlmt glossy fresh- 
ness, that unimpeachable respectability often seen 
where a man's best clothes are not in daily use. 
For a breast-pin he wore a little screw-driver in 
gold, into the top of which was sunk a pointed 
diamond of the purest water. Glancing down 
the athletic lines of his figure, Billy's eye fell 
upon a watch-chain of massive gold, from which, 
at the waistcoat button, depended a variety of 
breloques in polished steel. 

Billy noticed that his companion, a sharp-fea- 
tured and thinner man, was quietly dressed, and 
without ornament. His air was restless, his ex- 
pression nervous, and his long fingers played 
around his knobby walking-stick as if it were a 
musical instrument. Billy did not think his 
nervousness extraordinary after he had noticed 
his power of expectoration, and a discoloration 
for which Virginia is responsible. It disgusted 
Billy the more, because it reminded him how 
much more cleanly we are in this respect within 
twenty years. Formerly the wild American 
would establish a puddle at his side wherever he 
travelled ; but now you must seek the smoking- 
car to enjoy that nuisance. As his eye lingered 
upon the breloques of the stouter party with 



THE ISLAND OF BOGUSSA. 265 

curiosity, he found his arm invaded by the 
other's, and himself drawn aside into a confiden- 
tial communication. 

" Pretty, ain't they ? and, though toys, are so 
correct. I got them made in New York, where 
there 's a fellow who puts real skill into these 
things. That chap elevates the profession, and 
gives it the dignity of a science. In the old 
days, the barons took from the people what they 
wanted by weapons now wholly superseded. A 
couple of good revolvers could fetch down, in no 
time, half the gentry of those castles on the 
Ehine. But instruments of all sorts improve, 
and ours have got a finish and delicacy which 
makes it a pleasure to use them. And you see 
everybody knows now that property has no rights. 
It is not any thing solid, only a knack of getting ; 
and we, for the sake of fair play, are trying to 
make the knack of keeping hard for them. They 
all feel it so, and don't mind. In fact, we con- 
sider ourselves a kind of silent partners of the 
banks. They collect, and we distribute. We 
compromised with them too much at first, but we 
are getting more difficult. You see we have got 
every thing on our side now, and the game really 
begins to lose its interest. What with steel such 



266 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

as they make now-a-days, dynamite, and the rest 
of it, it is only getting to be too easy." 

Saying this, the big man took from an inner 
pocket an embroidered cigar-case, and drawing 
from it two gigantic cigars, he offered Billy one, 
and, after striking a match, lighted the other for 
himself. As he looked steadily at Billy, with 
distended cheeks and eyes that flashed and 
wavered in the crimson light, while ignition went 
on, to Billy's startled sense he seemed to be look- 
ing upon one of those strange gargoyles in stone, 
where, amid saintly figures, the leer of diabolism, 
and a cynicism strangely misplaced, look out 
upon you. 

After this introduction, Mr. Bouncer found 
himself at home everywhere. The freedom of the 
island seemed to have been presented to him in 
the cordial cock-tail he had imbibed. A gene- 
ral devil-may-care air pervaded the place. Every 
thing seemed to run upon oil, and good-fellowship 
was the rule of life. Not that the society was 
wholly homogeneous. There were many who 
seemed to live in the sunshine, clinging together, 
like herrings in schools, and turning every fin as 
the leader led ; but there were others lonely, • 
reticent, mournful. These lived abstractedly, and 



THE ISLAND OP BOGUSSA, 267 

by themselves : their appearance was less jovial, 
their figures less ample, and their manner had 
far less breadth. They were as scrupulously neat, 
dressed carefully in black, as their companions 
were loud or careless in their attire. They 
might be seen at their desks, in silent corners, 
writing with an expression of anxiety and care. 
If you looked over their shoulder, you would see 
that they had not confined themselves to the 
expression of their thoughts on paper, but were 
making out what appeared to be subscription- 
papers, with a variety of signatures, and different 
sums attached to each name. These men, as 
well as the clergymen, for such there seemed to 
be from some unmentionable solemnity of dress 
or manner, repudiated the solicitations of the 
bar-room, asserting that mixed drinks unsteadied 
their hands, and confined themselves entirely to 
water. But they complained that ice was so hard 
to get : and water, here, tasted insipid compared 
with what they remembered of the dagger-like 
strike of chill that used to shoot through them 
from the gigantic ice-pitcher. 

Americans like lectures, and these exiles, who 
could not understand Spanish actors even if they 
had had any, had organized a lyceum course, 



268 CHEQUER-WORK. 

which was very well received. The speakers 
were invited to have it out and say their whole 
thought, confident in the safety of extremes. 
One of the first of these lectures was by a rev- 
erend gentleman, from Connecticut, who was 
making a permanent visit abroad for his mental 
and physical health. He found no language 
strong enough to express his abhorrence of the 
imps of the decanter and its victims. As Billy 
listened, he feared that the jovial crew he had 
met in the semi-circular temple of Bacchus would 
be annoyed and perhaps indignant at the strength 
of the lecturer's convictions. He was sallow and 
not nice to look upon, and his acerbity proclaimed 
that he considered courtesy as one of the most 
dangerous approaches to inebriety. To Billy's 
surprise, the jolly boys rather enjoyed him. 
" What a gizzard that chap has got ! " said one ; 
" it's all gall-stones and old iron ; and did you 
ever hear such intemperance ! What cometh out 
of that fellow's mouth seems to me stronger stuff 
than any of us put into ours." 

A Sj)anish waiter, who was studying English, 
misunderstood the drift of the discourse, and 
thought the doctor was denouncing the use of 
ice-water, so passionate were his expressions con- 



THE ISLAND OF BOGUSSA. 269 

cerning it. This waiter had heard of this dan- 
gerous liquor, and he knew that it was generally 
held in Europe to be the cause of the bad teeth and 
poor health of Americans. He told his friends 
in his pantry that he supposed it was the cheap- 
ness which led to the abuse of it, adding : " You 
know if it were our Amontillado they would not 
be so rash in wasting their money." 

Other lectures in the course followed. They 
were all taken good-naturedly by the audience, 
whose anxiety as to public opinion did not lie in 
that direction, and who, by the extent of their 
hospitality, turned no novelty from their door. 
Indeed, the general sentiment was encouraging to 
audacity of speculation. The world is crowded 
with new facts and new theories. Everybody's 
brain is fermenting with them. Not only do the 
modest pretensions of our fathers seem anti- 
quated childishness, but so active is modern 
thought that, to get a hearing, these lecturers, 
like gamblers, seemed to say to the opinion of 
the hour, " I go you ten better on that." 

If they had gone twenty, not a listener would 
have been disturbed. I do not say that they 
actually represented Messrs. Darwin and Huxley 
as old fogies, or time-serving conservatives, but 



270 CHEQUER-WORK. 

they managed to dress out the beliefs of these 
gentlemen in such a way that they would not 
haye recognized their own offspring. They out- 
Heroded Herod, out-Germanized Germany. They 
set fire to the world, — saw exhaling, like smoke, 
its pretty creeds, its childish sentiments, its in- 
fantile aspirations, and, like monkeys, sat kicking 
and laughing in the ashes of all beliefs. They 
used all the marvellous machinery of the mind, — 
its intelligence, its logic, its sarcasm, — to show 
that it was itself only the old matter we knew of 
under conditions of oscillation, in themselves 
hardly interesting. They stood peering over this 
molecular movement with their gigantic lens and 
found, as Pompey did, the Holy of Holies quite 
empty. 

These new statements of the solidarity of mat- 
ter were received with loud approval by the audi- 
tory. Each expressed a satisfaction, tliough in 
a different manner. A subtle smile played round 
the lips of the gentlemen in black, while the 
jovial children of Bacchus heaved like porpoises 
in a sea of bliss. 

" Go it, old buster ! " they cried. " Get the 
sawdust out of the baby. That 's all the stuffing 
we want ! " 



THE ISLAND OP BOGUSSA. 271 

Their opinion seemed one not of the intellect 
only, but their whole character went with it. 
They made it so personal, that you would liave 
said that it was a matter of importance to them 
to .find a solution to the enigma of the world 
which would dispense with rectitude and con- 
science. They felt the convenience of the prin- 
ciples the world was proclaiming about them. 
In fact, they had always acted on them, though, 
not being writers or orators, they had not given 
their convictions the form of words. 

This lecture, which pleased all, was soon fol- 
lowed by one on Property, which was even more 
successful than the first. The speaker explained 
and vindicated the progress of opinion in every 
direction. Every image, he said, however it may 
hold high its front of gold or brass in the sun- 
shine, carries beneath feet of clay only. What- 
ever may be thought of the God in heaven, it is 
certain, he said, that on earth the real god, above 
all other gods, is Property. His shrine is in the 
heart of man ; he needs no outward temple or 
service. It would be superfluous, a mockery, to 
institute a priesthood for a religion of which all 
are proselytes already. And yet that god, with 
his feet of clay, must tumble with the rest. If 



272 CHEQUER-WORK. 

the distinction between man and man had been 
merely a bauble, a ribbon, a star, the people could 
have borne with it. But the difference was other, 
and brought luxury and starvation, culture and 
ignorance, impunity and punishment, into sharp 
contrast. " Cannot one see," he said, " with half 
an eye, that the barbarous right of possession, in- 
herited with a thousand perishing blunders from 
the feudal robbers of the past, is at war as 
much with common sense and common humanity 
as it is with the whole spirit of the religion we 
profess? When that delicate financial question 
concerning the coin of Rome was propounded to 
the Saviour, he escaped the solution by punning 
upon the superscription. But is not his whole 
life, his every word, a proclamation of the doc- 
trine of the injustice of riches ? In the millen- 
nium which is awaiting the world, it is plain 
that its first condition will be the abolition 
of property-distinctions. Some have thought 
that there would be universal and equalized 
wealth and comfort, while other theorists main- 
tain that it is discomfort and poverty which 
will be universal. There seems the greatest 
ground for the latter supposition, if certain finan- 
cial heresies, still retained by the crumbling gov- 



THE ISLAND OF BOGUSSA. 273 

ernments of the world, succeed in tyrannizing 
for ever." 

Turning with a graceful bend of the head 
towards the group of bankers and financiers — who 
had hidden from Billy Bouncer, under a mask 
of careless joviality, profound fiscal ability, and 
schemes whose daring and failure only showed 
that they were as yet in advance of their age — 
in a voice deep with emotion the lecturer added : — 

" And how fitly should we recognize those 
martyrs to humanity, those pioneers whose de- 
fiance of the oppression of law has constituted 
them the champions of the people's rights, the 
advanced guard of the holy army of liberty," — 
here he borrowed a few sentences from Yictor 
Hugo in the direction of his thought, and cul- 
minated with a welcome to them, on his own part, 
to the glorious freedom of the island of Bogussa, 
where a common manhood and a common mis- 
fortune made them brothers, and where in mutual 
confidence and a friendliness, which only the 
grave should interrupt, they all lived harmoni- 
ously together. 

While listening to this peroration, Mr. Bouncer 
was inwardly much disturbed. He did not cor- 
dially accept the glowing beliefs of the speaker, 
18 



274 CHEQUER-WORK. 

though the rest in the hall generally did. Life 
at his first coming to the island had seemed to 
him solid and real ; the bowling alley had a charm 
which made his whole body, to the tips of his 
fingers, tingle with delight. He had a soothing 
sense of the agreeable reality of the Chenango 
cock-tail. But now things began to look misty 
and pale. Every thing swam round him. The 
oldest beliefs, the newest friendships, became 
vague and unsubstantial. Earth suddenly was 
only a dissolving view. With a cold shudder 
he plunged his hand into his pocket and brought 
out the roll of bills of the Bogussa Bank. He 
tried to make the awkward-looking eagle and the 
peaceful olives it sat on look real ; but either the 
wavy lines on the paper made him dizzy, or ob- 
scuring doubts from the fountain of his being had 
made him faint, for to his uncertain vision the 
eagle flapped his wings and disappeared, while 
the nest of olives over which it had brooded 
changed to little impish faces which mocked at 
him and jeered. 

As he replaced the roll in his pocket he tried 
to remember that the whole island and its pos- 
sessions were security for the value of the bills. 
Still his soul stretched yearningly towards the 



THE ISLAND OP BOGUSSA. 275 

foolish gold and silver he had left with the official 
at the little shanty ; and drawing from his waist- 
coat pocket a stamped receipt for the same, he 
read, with much satisfaction, these words, in both 
English and Spanish, in the corner : " Specie to 
be returned if called for within ten days." He 
felt strong and resolute in a minute. He thrust 
out his funny, square-toed boots, so long and flat, 
till he could feel his legs like iron rods before 
him, and sank back with a look at the speaker 
of indifference, as of one unconcerned in the 
discussion, and followed him to the end. He 
thought his change of expression somewhat dis- 
turbed the orator in his turn. Billy had felt that 
when the generous welcome extended to unfor- 
tunates fell upon his ear, the speaker's eye had, 
with incomprehensible sympathy, included him 
among the objects of his bounty ; and this pat- 
ronage had somewhat discomfited and appalled 
him. But as he looked the good man straight 
in the face, he wondered that he had not noticed 
before that shade of insincerity, of conspiracy, 
which was now to him so evident. 

He enjoyed the orator coming to his finish as 
the turf -man, who knows where the money lies, 
sees with a smile the struggling ruck of horses 



276 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

turning the corner. As the lecturer paused for 
his gulp of water, to smooth the way for his con- 
fident and solemn termination, Mr. Bouncer's eye 
chanced to read a legend on the wall behind the 
desk, to this effect : — 

Pecunia non olet. 

After perusing it awhile, he noticed that 
a hand had scored with chalk under it the 
words : — 

" Non valet : it does not pay," 

Clutching his hat, Billy jumped to his feet, cry- 
ing joyously : — 

"Yes, I know 
That is so ! " 

The stay of our hero after this was not long 
in the island. His visit had been delightful, but 
he thought it time to leave. However agreeable 
his American friends had been, he recalled the 
solid charms of his gold and silver still with the 
official, and the peace of the life elsewhere, if 
comparatively stupid and dull, with the gayest 
anticipations. On reaching the pier, the music of 
the hissing steam once more saluted him. As 
he appeared again with a second rap at the little 



THE ISLAND OF BOGUSSA. 277 

window, it again ascended and revealed the face 
of the handsome officer, who saluted him with 
mock gravity, and the questioning, almost accu- 
sative, countenance of the American interpreter 
behind. 

" What," said he, looking at the carpet-bag, — 
" going so soon ! I thought you were — " 

" No," turning slowly his head, " no," said his 
companion, in magnificent Spanish ; " can't you 
seethe gentleman isnH one of them? He is only 
a visitor." 

" Yes, I am one of them," answered Billy, " if 
by that you mean an American." 

" The Senor, I think, knows well enough what 
I mean ; but he is pleased to mystify me." But 
reading an expression of surprise upon the face 
of Billy, he leaned towards him and whispered : — 

" You see we all got tired of having them round. 
They were always turning up with some imitation 
of the notes of the Bank of England, or some 
great banking-house ; and they even were shabby 
enough to try to come over those poor Orientals, 
which they did easily enough. They were always 
coming down on their honest countrymen in the 
cities they visited, — sometimes founding bogus 
banking-houses themselves, and sometimes get- 



278 CHEQUER-WORK. 

ting into clubs and bringing a card or two that 
did not belong there. And they didn't like it 
much either, themselves. They were always 
talking about the want of liberty and smartness 
in the old country. They could not live as the 
others did, but huddled like sheep in great read- 
ing-rooms, where they improved their minds by 
the latest villanies at home. They were always 
missing their iced-water, and their peanuts. And 
so it was arranged that Spain should sell them 
this little island, which they bought out, and 
where they have a hotel and run a bank of their 
own." 

" All aboard ! " just then shouted the engineer, 
who, as Billy Bouncer passed him to go forward, 
grinned from ear to ear. 



XI. 
FEEE TRADE. 



XL 
FEEE TRADE. 



'T^HBRE is making now with us a fresh move- 
ment in favor of free trade. As its friends 
saj, the plant of American industry is now sturdy 
enough and sufficiently well rooted to dispense 
with glass ; that it is strong enough to resist all 
chills of competition ; and therefore no longer 
needs the hot-house. Something, too, it may be, 
of that restlessness and desire for change, always 
so lively with us, which may move these gentlemen 
to action. It is certainly a very pleasant thing to 
buy a pocket-knife for fifty cents when we have 
been giving a dollar for one. But the whole 
question is here, " Where is the fifty cents to come 
from ? " It is cheaper for a man, prosperous 
through home-industry, to pay a dollar for what 
he wants, than for a poorer man his fifty cents. 
In nothing has the American people shown a 
long-sighted sagacity more than in its willingness 



282 CHEQUEE-WORK. 

to bear the immediate burden of a tax on goods 
it does not make, and thereby foster a prosperity 
in which it knows it shall share. 

The West is in some degree the pensioner of 
England. Its production of bread-stuffs finds 
there a market : not always, indeed, a sure or 
steady one. It might have thought it a matter 
of indifference whether it bought beyond its 
boundaries the manufactures it needed from 
Old or New England ; but it was wiser than to 
make that mistake. England would have gladly, 
in return for its corn, overwhelmed its markets 
from her surplus of production; and then New 
England, with poor soil and scanty harvest, would 
have been forced to Western emigration, to par- 
take of the profits made from the mother coun- 
try. She would have disputed the soil of the 
West with the Western man, brought a rivalry 
he could not afford, and have lost to him his 
nearest and best purchaser ; but this ♦policy 
was too unwise for the American. He knew 
that. New England impoverished, the mountain 
streams which feed his levels would at last 
extend to him their own desiccation ; and he 
felt prophetically that if he bore his share of 
the burden which should plant and foster our 



FEEE TRADE. 283 

young industry, the overflow of its wealth would 
build his cities, lay down his railroads, and sup- 
ply for him that sure and near market which 
would consummate his prosperity. It is to the 
eternal honor of the American people that, slight- 
ing the solicitations of England, they have stood 
stanchly by the principle of American industry ; 
and verily they have their reward. It is too late 
now for seduction, for they in the "West have a 
young manufacturing industry of their own to 
foster, and they look to us for an assurance of 
the same support which they have before so cor- 
dially given us. 

Free trade in England meant to provide by the 
absence of duties below a certain point for the 
introduction of bread-stuffs, the feeder to her 
human machinery ; while on the other hand it 
invited the world to imitate her, and admit, free 
of duty, her manufactures furnished at the lowest 
cost compatible with life. It is amusing to see 
England trying to adjust herself to the new 
conditions, for we furnish her now not only with 
wheat and other grains, but with meats, on the 
hoof, or packed in ice, and, to her astonishment, 
are flooding her with articles in wood and metal 
confessedly superior to her own. She, the great 



284 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

workshop of the world, is supplying herself from 
foreign workshops. It is evident that this cannot 
go on indefinitely without bringing her to the 
condition of the boy who wanted a cheap jack- 
knife, but did not know how to get the money. 
While the superior ingenuity, lightness j and skill 
of American work should naturally and properly 
meet with welcome in England, and be for her 
advantage to buy, yet no economist there can see 
her farmers ruined by competition from abroad, 
and her own manufactures neglected for those of 
the United States, without alarm. She must 
either manage to work up her goods into shapes 
cheaper and better than our own, and so defy us, 
or, to her great distress, see disappearing like a 
phantom that free trade which had sat like a queen 
so long by the side of the tridented Britannia. 
All eyes are watching the issue ; prophets abound 
with their vaticinations. Some see in all this the 
ruin of England ; some predict that, girding up 
her loins, she will soon be known as the great 
protectionist nation pur et simple ; while others 
venture to suppose that, threatened by exhaustion 
at home, she may colonize close to our inex- 
haustible mines and coal-beds, — an exodus of 
capital and labor such as the world has never 



FBEE TRADE. 285 

seen. Then haply may be realized the anticipa- 
tion of the American who said the day would 
come when his countrymen, loving their ancestral 
home, would plant their villas on the banks of 
the beautiful Thames and Wye, as the Romans 
usurped in Magna Gr^cia the country-houses at 
Baiae and Pompeii, which Grecian colonists first 
planted there. 

The word " free-trade " has that charm which 
attaches to every epithet compounded of the glo- 
rious word " free." It includes the dislike of 
restraint, and, above all, restriction in the choice 
of markets enforced upon all by the minority 
who profit by it. It is said to beln the spirit of 
our institutions, in the spirit of the age. Inter- 
course is too lively now for national isolation. 
We come and go to all parts of the earth, and 
the boundaries of States are melting before the 
breath of the locomotive. The man who has 
bought a Persian rug the month before in the 
bazaars of Cairo dislikes to pay more than double 
its price in a Boston shop. There is that soli- 
darity of peoples which, having even invaded 
China and overridden its more than Chinese wall 
of exclusion, makes a man in some sense a citi- 
zen of the countries in which he lingers so much. 



286 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

Does not the share which the American has in 
the glories of Mont Blanc and the Wetterhorn 
bid him wish well to his fellow-citizen of a month, 
the watch-maker of Geneva, and set aside as im- 
pertinent the demands of a youthful Waltham 
and an 'American time-keeper ? 

And then there is the large utterance of the 
gentlemen who make theories and propound them 
in books. They will from their arm-chairs ex- 
plode institutions of government, clumsy laws of 
commerce, and introduce an intelligent fraterni- 
zation of peoples which, while ennobling their 
sentiment, shall be also, as they say, for the 
instant advantage of all. 

When a man begins to love a theory he dislikes 
any facts which are contrary to his opinion, as 
Barry said after studying the old masters, " Na- 
ture puts me out." In practical affairs a theory 
serves little, except for the mind's diversion, un- 
less facts corroborate it. Sieyes went about with 
his pockets full of constitutions. For all we 
know they might have worked well, but they 
were never tried. They existed not in esse, but 
only in posse, as theories. That of free trade 
is at least as good as the rest, but so long as the 
pacification and brotherhood of nations exist 



FREE TRADE. 287 

only in the brain of a theorist, there is little 
safely to be done with it. There is a theory that 
Christian nations should never fight each other. 
This certainly is the best of theories, and all hope 
that the time may come when it will prove a 
reality ; but till it does, that wing of the principle 
of national amity can hardly advance unsup- 
ported by the whole army of Christianity. Both 
are dreams which some far-off future may realize ; 
but till that arrives we should beware of the 
deceptions of hope. We must take the world as 
we find it. We are not appointed to be our 
brother's keeper, and an enlightened selfishness 
will prove a better counsellor than that philan- 
thropy that invites us to an unrestricted inter- 
change of commodities without guaranteeing that 
advantage which is the natural basis of human 
action. 

Moralists have wisely held that selfishness bet- 
ter attains the end of universal happiness than if 
each person, neglecting his own, looks only after 
the interest of his neighbor. There is nothing 
to be ashamed of in a nation's or individual's 
proclaiming that his guide is that enlightened 
selfishness. The words " free " or " general bene- 
fit" should not deter us from trusting such a 



288 CHEQITEE-WORK. 

guide ; though to the theorist they retain their 
charm. 

Our people have now tried for many years the 
advantage of the motto, which Italy not long 
since made her device : " L* Italia fera da se." 
We have borne the burden of a tariff without 
murmuring, and we are not tired of it yet. We 
see around us prosperity, and are willing to 
believe that the fostering of home labor, internal 
commerce, and activity within our borders, have 
had much to do with it. This bugbear of a home 
industry, guarded by protection so alarming to 
Europe, has not frightened our people from its , 
increased extension. The West demands the 
monster, the South also, and even baby States 
are crying for it. There may be over-production, 
but it is better to suffer from this, while employ- 
ing our own people, than to see them crushed 
through an over-importation of Europe's excess of 
inferior goods. A time may come when rival 
States may try to break down each other by ruin- 
ous prices in manufactured goods, but that is 
better than that Europe should do us this injury. 
Better that a custom-house should show a strin- 
gency to exclusion, than bear as its motto: 
" European rubbish shot here." 



FREE TRADE. 289 

If the Americans were an uninventive or 
stupid people, there might be an excuse for their 
relinquishing, through incapacity, any production 
of manufactures demanding skill. If America 
were, one rolling prairie, only suitable for the 
growth of bread-stuffs, or the raising of cattle, 
slie might forego the advantage of manufacturing 
her own articles of wool, silk, and cotton ; but 
she is a continent of different soils, different 
climates, inhabited by different races. She is a 
world sufl&cient to herself, and in the interchange 
of the growths, the food, the fruits, the manu- 
factures of her different zones, she is already the 
only free-trading nation of the world. Not a 
duty, not a tax is levied on the introduction of 
any thing created within herself b^ any of her 
many sovereign States. A free-trader may hold 
that this relation of the States to each other is an 
anticipation of his own doctrine ; a witness to 
its advantage and safety. But when Europe is 
heaving with the pent-up activities of socialism 
and nihilism, and the intrepid absurdity of strikes, 
the security so proudly proclaimed by the teachers 
of free trade may disappear in a moment. And 
is there no chance of war ? An iron barrier 
may unexpectedly be around every nation ; the 

19 



290 CHEQUER-WORK. 

pathway of the seas will be then at his mercy 
who shall prove himself there the strongest ; and 
the sweet comity of nations and the reign of 
universal brotherhood will disappear in the tu- 
mult. The advocates of free trade in America 
are obliged to confess that the policy of protecting 
duties is at least more than a partial success. 
The veterans of this belief live in a cloudland of 
their own, and can paint for you our present 
prosperity, as it would have been enhanced if the 
nation had been a convert to them ; but they all, 
young and old, are quite willing to try an ex- 
periment with other people's property, and imme- 
diately repeal all protective laws. A theorist is 
never content to leave well alone, and he even 
quarrels with a good result if not in accordance 
with his notions ; but they now try to show that 
the time has come when we should leave our lead- 
ing-strings ; that our great skill and success prove 
that we may compete even-handed with the world. 
As this experiment has never been tried, and the 
result is wholly problematical, there can of course 
be no proof of its truth. But this nowise dis- 
heartens the stout theorist. But it does naturally 
alarm the manufacturer, who has no guarantee 
of advantage to give him confidence. He 



FREE TEADE. 291 

knows the volatile nature of money, and how 
easily riches take wings. He knows how soon a 
small percentage against him will ruin a busi- 
ness. All business, especially that of manufac- 
turing, costs much to keep up. The expense of 
the plant, the wear and tear of machinery, are 
heavy weights which he can only carry when 
prosperous. Let him lose, beyond recovery, ever 
so little on a yard of goods, and his business is 
ruined. What remains from the wreck jfiies else- 
where for a safer investment : thus we have seen 
whole industries move from nation to nation, as 
the margin of profit made their introduction profit- 
able. And, in fact, the good sense of the nation 
will adjust an equilibrium disturbed by a too 
great profit to the manufacturer, as it should 
when it is the importer whose profit is too great. 
Things adjust themselves, and our free-trader 
may rely upon it that when a tariff is plainly 
unnecessary the manufacturer will no longer de- 
mand a protection which, if he did, the nation 
would refuse ; but till, then people have the good 
sense to see that, like charity, care for the wealth 
of nations should begin at home. We are some- 
times told that all the merchants, or all of any 
other class, are for free trade. The fallacy is in 



292 CHEQUER-WORK. 

the belief that that can be profitable to a class 
which is injurious to the whole. A nation is a 
vital entity, and its roots strike deep into home 
labor and home productions. The merchant who 
complains that a tariff is a bar to his commerce 
should direct his attention to the transfer of home 
goods to foreign States unsupplied with our pro- 
ductions. If he does not find a market, he should 
create one. If there should be none to be found 
or created, he should direct his capital into more 
remunerative channels. Nothing can be more 
unfair than for the trader to try and overturn a 
home industry that his business may flourish 
through the ruin of another's. With the foreign 
importer it is quite otherwise : he is too often 
not only no citizen of the country with whose 
laws he. intermeddles, but his interest is else- 
where, and he conveniently brings with him his 
theories of free trade, which he is certain are 
profitable to himself, excusing their expression 
by right of the doubtful citizenship to which he 
makes claim. 

To another class belongs the sturdy self-seeker, 
well rooted in the profoundest instincts of his 
own advantage, who would dazzle or beguile his 
neighbor with truths or plausibilities which must 



FEEE TRADE. 293 

finally bring the water to his own wheel. And, 
among these latter, we count as the most persist- 
ent and skilful propagandist her, who, sitting 
syren-like on the shores of her own green island, 
would make a prey of every ship and every mari- 
ner that gets wrecked upon her theories of free 
trade. 

It may to some seem strange that England, 
which owes its power and position to the unde- 
viating command of a long-descended selfishness, 
should assume the harp and sing the song of' 
seduction. For a wonder, at last, her thought is 
turned away from her own interest to lose itself 
in benevolent purposes for others. It may be a 
sign of dotage that she should thus babble of 
humanitarian schemes. But if a maudlin desire 
to propagate throughout the world her convic- 
tions on this matter be a sign of decrepitude, we 
fear she may to.o much resemble the famous pope, 
who having, through such a show, gained his 
end, was yet seen flourishing his staff, full of an 
early vigor and a hearty confidence, with a face 
whose strongest expression was yet that of self- 
interest. Like the fox who had lost its tail, it 
invites other foxes to think poorly of caudal ex- 
cess, though one would not at first sight observe 
such a resemblance. 



294 CHEQUER-WORK. 

But has England not abated something which 
belongs to her nature, and may not, there- 
fore, her whining trouble be, not the sign of 
-powerful beneficence, but a confession of loss ? 
Is not her situation hourly more artificial and 
exposed to danger ? Is she now that self-con- 
tained, tight little island which could look, over 
her fringe of blue, with proud indifference upon 
the blunders of her neighbors ? Is slie not suf- 
fering the penalty of the over-indulgence of that 
very protection she now contemns ? Is she not 
becoming a monstrous work-shop, which would 
fabricate for the, human race, not only receiving 
in return for this their raw material, but day by 
day the fulness of spoil from foreign harvests, 
and continental markets ? The world sends to 
her her poultry, her fish, her beeves, her cheeses, 
and every salted and prepared eatable. If this 
be so, can it be possible that her voice should 
have the impartiality of truth ? Is she not 
nervous, amid all her wealth, at the thought that, 
year by year, her necessaries of life are drawn 
from the ends of the earth ? Is not an ever- 
extending and profitable market abroad for her 
industry the one solution for the present, and for 
the future still more, of her difficulty ? 



FREE TRADE. 295 

With a prosperity so dangerous that it reminds 
one of the pagan king who made sacrifices from 
his stores to avert some impending fatality ; with 
a system of production so all-devouring that it 
takes to feed it, like a cancer, the vital forces of 
the nation, she can scarcely afford to play with 
principles or make sacrifices to her long-victorious 
selfishness. Nationally blind to the temperaments 
and requirements of other nations, she may well 
in this, as in so many other of her dogmas, hold 
to a certain honesty, and believe that which is 
good for England ought to be good everywhere. 
She sometimes scolds a little, but is in the main 
content to refer, with a mild disdain, to the mole- 
like blindness of other nations to their own in- 
terest, though if such a suggestion could be 
brought home to herself, she would stare in amaze- 
ment. 

So, as may be seen, in this matter getting a 
hint from England, we prefer to borrow from 
her to strengthen us, — not her words of sus- 
picious counsel, but the methods of that intelli- 
gent selfishness which has placed her so high 
among the nations. And, indeed, in this whole 
matter of work, what is there worth listening to 
but an intelligent selfishness ? When Adam 



296 CHEQtJER-WOEK. 

Smith, the greatest writer upon these matters, 
wished to draw attention, he baited his title 
with exhaustive completeness, and called it 
" The Wealth of Nations." For that is the sub- 
ject of our story, — not sentiment, nor heroics ; 
not a suggestion of something which may prove 
an advantage, but far more likely a disadvantage ; 
not the thin scream of an ignorant eagle who 
sees in the word " free " something which has 
made him scream before, — but the simple ques- 
tion, " Will protection or free trade increase the 
riches of a nation ? " It may be low ; it may be 
egotistical ; it must be selfish ; for the point is 
only there. If to-morrow free trade would make 
every man in the United States richer, it would 
be well to adopt it to-morrow. If, on the con- 
trary, protection does, it would be the maddest 
folly to exchange such a gain for such a loss. 
And that it does so would seem to be too easy to 
prove. 

Before we had ventured on the experiment 
there was a gentleman by the name of Lowell, 
who, in England, after contemplating the un- 
paralleled manufacturing prosperity tliere, was 
asked, being a man of great skill in such matters, 
by a fellow-countryman, if he could find at home 



FREE TEADE. 29T 

some chance for such good fortune, matching our 
cheap water-power against England's expensive 
steam-power, their degraded and starving ope- 
rative against our own cleverer and better-paid 
one, and our near home-market against their dis- 
tant one. He replied : "I will figure it out." 
He did so, and became convinced of its practi- 
cabilitj. In the England which so loves horses, 
when a three-year-old runs against the older favor- 
ite, the favorite is weighted to make the race even. 
And so, said he, " The old horse carrying the 
weights of certain duties, I think we will give 
him a try." This decision, if successful, implied 
many things. It implied that the empty, if not 
barren, field of Chelmsford, where the Merrimack 
murmured of neglect through a houseless soli- 
tude, should see rise from the soil a rich and 
beautiful city, finding occupation and content for 
its forty thousand inhabitants. It implied a use 
for the many idle hands of American women in 
many a country town. It implied the growth and 
support of every farming interest which should 
feed and clothe this laboring multitude. It im- 
plied in our own fair city, where the masts of 
commerce should later vanish from our wharves ; 
in our unpeopled farms which die visibly beside 



298 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

the luxuriant West ; the steady flow of wealth 
to those who, after adorning the city of their 
choice with many an institution of art and 
learning, should find means from their over- 
flowing coffers to bind to her, as with hoops 
of steel, that West which, having at first 
nothing, fed upon the bounty of the East, and 
which, if in its lusty manhood, Jerusha-like, it 
struck sometimes the hand that fed it and dis- 
allowed its indebtedness, yet should reverentially 
remember it. It implied, in fact, civilization and 
prosperity throughout New England, and through 
her, to the whole country. Tlie South found a 
rival to England which could enhance the value 
of her cotton, and our nearer market, both ways, 
was always a mutual benefit. One prosperous 
manufacture makes many, and soon the naiad of 
each of our streams gayly tossed her pearls over 
the water-wheel in aid of every industry. All 
metals, all woods, all stuffs, all leathers, were 
tortured to furnish to the world articles whose 
substantial genuineness that world had never 
fairly recognized till our Centennial show of 
them. 

In some degree, this figuring of Mr. Lowell's 
implied the civilization of America. All this was 



FREE TRADE. 299 

certainly a fine thing ; and no theorist can object 
to his so filling up that pleasant plain at Chelms- 
ford, For we speak of this mother-bird, whose 
struggle for life was there secured, and, by im- 
plication, through her to the hundreds of her 
chicks now with prosperous, well-filled nests of 
their own. It is very certain we never could 
have moved in this race with England without the 
advantage of a handicap upon the older horse. 
She would have continued to make our cottons 
and calicoes, and every utensil of use, without the 
need of that colonial law which once forbade our 
buying of any but of her. Certainly every sen- 
sible American must bless such a system as 
changed the bare banks of the Merrimack into 
cities like Lowell and Lawrence. That Pactolus, 
once the Merrimack, has irrigated America even 
to its Pacific slope, and had no water-wheel been 
there we can imagine the symbolic New Zealander 
of the future as mourning above our beautiful 
river, with even more grief than over our maternal 
Thames, for he would have had to think, not of 
cities that were and are not, but of those which 
could have been and were not. 

We believe Macaulay and many another proph- 
et has said of the United States : " Your system 



300 CHEQUER-WORK. 

of freedom is only possible while your numbers 
are few, and those few content with good wages 
and work." It seems a truism indeed ; and we 
can only conceive of a freeman here as a man 
well clothed, well fed, with good wages, and in- 
dependent through self-respect. No abject pauper 
cares to maintain a political freedom which to 
him is worthless compared to bread. 

Europe has qualified the original character of 
the free-born voter by the well-known ruffian and 
tool of New York slums, and taught us what 
in the future we should avoid. Between the 
wheels of competition man is ground to dust, his 
soul evaporates, his body decays, and he becomes 
merely the unresisting extension of machinery 
without a heart. Now the first movement, the 
first victim of the competing wheels of England 
and America must be our operative. If he can- 
not be fed through our tariff, he must fall to the 
level of the rival he struggles with. And as 

" Men must work and women must weep." 

he must sell his strength as it is daily sold in 
England at a starvation price, or not work at all. 
Capital is movable, and when riches have wings 
they fly to the most profitable field ; but the Ixion 



FREE TEADE. 301 

of the mill must turn with his wheel, though its 
motion beat the life out of him. Unless we want 
to precipitate our evil day, unless we want to 
ripen still more the disaffection of the disaffected 
classes, unless we wish to see the outcast pals of 
poor Tweed leavening our villages, and the hour 
soon sound when a strong hand must curb anar- 
chical turbulence, — ^^we may well pause, for the 
sake of the laborer himself, before we make him 
the fellow of the perishing population of toil in 
old Europe. 




XII. 
ARY SCHEFFER 



xn. 

AKY SCHEFFER. 



A GLANCE m RETROSPECT AT THE GREAT 
PAINTER'S STUDIO. 



HIS RELATIONS WITH THE OELEANS FAMILY. — THE ATBLIEK- 
SALON, 

A EY SCHEFFER, the painter of Christus 
Consolator, Mig-non aspirante au del, 
Christ Tempted by Satan, and other world-re- 
nowned works, many of which have been widely 
diffused through engravings, during the entire 
reign of Louis Philippe had a studio which was 
the chief art-centre of Paris. Various causes 
contributed to give it this importance. Not 
only was Scheffer the teacher of that woman of 
genius, Louis Philippe's daughter, the Princess 
Marie, but he was a warm personal friend of the 
royal family. At Yersailles, one can now behold 
the most famous work of this princess, her 



306 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

Jeanne d^ Arc shrinking from the sight of the 
first Englishman she has killed. As was natural, 
on the exhibition of this statue, and the chronic 
scepticism as to royal genius, efforts were made 
to explain its merits by attributing them to her 
teacher; but Scheffer, who was her teacher, 
except in one signal instance, — the bust of his 
mother^ — was never a sculptor, and the doubt 
was silenced for ever by the question : " If a sculp- 
tor has aided her, name him ; for we know none 
in Paris who could do it." Besides this work 
of hers, which so many have admired, there was 
in Scheffer's studio, cast in bronze, a six or eight 
sided font. Each of these sides represented in alto- 
relievo some incident in the life of Jeanne d? Arc. 
This relation of Scheffer with the royal fam- 
ily was important, for not only there came from 
it a pupil of genius, but the Duke of Orleans 
(whose sudden death, when entangled in his 
cloak, as he endeavored to alight from his car- 
riage, his horses becoming wild from fright, was 
universally lamented as a national calamity) be- 
came a most discerning and appreciative lover of 
art and of his sister's teacher. The Duke of Or- 
leans, as a true prince should, welcomed the best 
talent of his time, nor is there during a hundred 



ARY SCHEFFER. 307 

years another instance of any member of a royal 
family bestowing such gracious recognition. 

Bohemia is a much more important province of 
the Parisian capital than is generally supposed. 
By instinct, artists are republicans, and as repub- 
licanism has been of late years to royal people a 
source of alarm, it was wise as well as gracious 
to make friends with these leaders of a dangerous 
class. The want of this precaution was one of 
the many mistakes of Napoleon the Third, during 
his whole reign, for though he made an attempt at 
conciliation of what he considered the immediate 
source of danger, the workingmen, he forgot the 
men of genius, the inspirers of republican senti- 
ment, as was sadly evidenced in the iconoclastic 
rage of Courbet, who, in revenge, as it were, for 
this oversight, prostrated the column of his great 
uncle. 

If the Duke of Orleans had lived, it is probable 
that his charm of manner, his intelligence, and 
his friendship with the art world, might have 
saved his too bourgeois father from the indiffer- 
ence, and finally the hostility, of universal Paris. 
The one thing in France a king cannot become 
with safety is a bourgeois, for the bourgeois class 
has always been time-serving and pusillanimous ; 



308 CHEQUER-WORK. 

and to resemble that is to win no favor. The 
one important fact for tlie success of the Repub- 
lic in France now is, that this class shall become 
frankly and bravely republican. Those above it 
have thus far been the puppets of parties, and 
those below the worthless straw, which zealots 
have kindled. If we may judge by many symp- 
toms, not only is this bourgeois class gaining 
courage to be frankly republican, but that more 
remote, but larger class, the great agricultural 
body, is learning for the first time the real mean- 
ing of republican government. 

Ary Scheffer, though a Parisian, was a native 
of Holland, and it is only a few years since that 
a statue has been erected to his memory in his 
native town. He brought with him from Hol- 
land something of that lofty ideal, something of 
those Protestant sentiments, which we find vivi- 
fying everywhere the glowing pages of Motley in 
his History of the Netherlands. It is not every- 
one who wills to who can paint a picture with 
noble or religious sentiment. Too many empty 
mockeries from easels of ability, in poor, irre- 
ligious Paris, show this. It was not till Schef- 
fer came, and a greater than he, Flandrin, that 
the Parisians were taught to admire and love pic- 



AEY SCHEFPER. 309 

tures of holy aspiration, of pure feeling, or of 
tender sentiment. 

Flandrin was the greater of the two, for not 
only was he far superior in technique and accu- 
rate drawing, but he expressed in his noble pic- 
tures religious emotion with far less of alloy. 
They who suppose that this power is buried in 
the tomb of Fra Beato Angelico, a part of the 
perished privilege of an earlier age, should not 
fail, in going to Paris, to visit the chapel of the 
Duke of Orleans and the many churches where 
the genius of Flandrin has ennobled our period of 
doubt and denial. 

And yet Scheifer fairly merited his fame. 
His Mig-non, his Santa Monica, his Christ could 
only be produced by one who felt what he pro- 
fessed. You are elevated, touched, when gazing 
on them, and you excuse the somewhat timid 
drawing, the somewhat constrained attitudes, and 
a cold color, which, if it has the dignity of fresco, 
has little to stimulate or charm, for the sake of 
the pure, beautiful faces, the noble conception, 
and a faith, which, if imperfectly expressed, is 
true and genuine. 

This double distinction of being the friend of 
royalty and of aiming at the grand style, with his 



310 CHEQUER-WORK. 

spacious- studios, where, like an atmosphere, was 
breathed from the walls distinction and holiness, 
made Scheffer a man apart from the crowd of 
gifted artists about him. His studios were salons 
as well as painting rooms. There he held recep- 
tions where all that was most eminent of good- 
ness, talent, or title willingly, came ; although 
such dainty feet trembled to disturb the dust in 
many Bohemian ateliers in which a more earthly 
worship of beauty was observed. 

There was something striking in the surround- 
ings which Scheffer had made for himself. Lift- 
ing the latch of a green door from the street, you 
entered a long passage-way opening into a sunny 
court, from the centre of which one or two 
majestic cedars of Lebanon guarded, as with out- 
stretched wings, the hospitable entrance of his 
dwelling, which directly faced you. Just before 
reaching this court, an iron grille with a bell-pull 
attached closed the passage, and there on either 
side was a studio. He mostly worked in the one 
to the right, while in that to the left were placed 
his finished pictures, portraits, and chalk outlines 
of some contemplated masterpiece. These rooms 
were singularly striking and impressive ; there 
were quiet escape from the world and invitation 



ARY SCHEFFER. 311 

to grave meditation. It was not the common 
shop of the painter, a reckless confusion of odds 
and ends, the paraphernalia of the gypsy land of 
genius, but everywhere sobriety, serenity and 
religious calm. No wonder, when Rubenstein 
played or Chopin improvised, that dreamy visitor 
from Polish skies, touched with the melancholy 
of exile and tingling with the rapture of despair, — 
that grave and dignified personages, thoughtful 
and holy women, as well as the fashionable crowd, 
which treads upon the heels of success, would all 
love to be there, and find themselves the better 
for their coming. 

Scarcely, a visitor of distinction, a man emi- 
nent for love of liberty, or heroic adventure, the 
bearer of hereditary honors, or the simple child 
of his own merit, who did not soon find his way 
to the presence of the beloved master. There 
was that indescribable something which few can 
define but all feel, tone, character, the atmosphere 
of the spot, a something rare and elevated, to- 
wards which always noble spirits gravitate, and 
when they meet are happy in the sense of an 
unspoken free-masonry, a common bond in the 
love of good things, which made the mere artistic 
purpose of the rooms quite secondary. Many a 



312 CHEQUER- WOBK. 

foot crossed that threshold, which attempted no 
other studio in Paris. Eyes quite innocent of all 
art knowledge looked respectfully upon walls 
haunted by so many in whom they believed. In- 
deed it was something exceptional in the ateliers 
of Scheffer, this presence of so many who came 
there, not for the sake of his art but for what his 
art expressed. People who knew nothing of color, 
poor critics of grouping or outline, could gaze 
into the rapture of Santa Monica's face and feel 
as if they understood it all. No argot of the 
rapin, no picturesque cant of the brush, echoed 
from those serious ceilings. Scheffer himself 
indulged little in that fervent phraseology which 
makes half the wit of most Parisian studios, 
though he was not wanting in simple explana- 
tions of his intentions of deep and true principles 
of art, and modest confessions of a desire out- 
running his performance. For he was in no 
sense an ardent or intoxicated genius ; he worked 
slowly and carefully ; he seemed ever trying pain- 
fully to withdraw the image he saw from his inner 
mind and fix it upon the canvas. He had no 
heats of possession, no coups de maitre, no tyr- 
anny of purpose, which used him as their blind 
instrument : all was tender, gentle, refined. 



AEY SCHEFFEE. 313 

Though in his first youth, small pictures of sen- 
timent, the Return of the Conscript, the pathos 
of the poor, what it is the fashion now to call 
" literature," as is the case with all struggling 
artists, were bandied about among unsympathiz- 
ing salesmen ; and though later he showed some- 
thing of a glow of color and passion for dra- 
matic action, yet the serious work of his life was 
the expression of purity and holiness in serene 
figures where the disturbance and sensuality of 
color were avoided, and all moved in a tranquil, 
silver light that seemed to come from above. 

It is therefore quite intelligible that there was 
a gulf between Scheffer and the group of young 
men struggling to the surface, — fiery, impatient 
spirits ; heralds, though perhaps they knew it not, 
of a new school whose morning promise should 
ascend, ever widening and brightening, till its 
glory reaches even to us, while the moonlight 
purity and the silver radiance of Scheffer shall 
have passed somewhat from men's eyes, behind 
the horizon. 

But during his life Scheffer lived with a kind 
of state equalled by no artist of his time unless 
it be Horace Vernet, who identified himself with 
the history of France and her glory by battle- 



314 CHEQUER-WORK. 

pieces, whicli made him dear not only to the royal 
family but to the people. 

This epoch of the reign of Louis Philippe was 
friendly both to art and literature. The patron- 
age which the king extended to every artist who 
could paint a battle-picture worthy of the halls of 
Versailles seems to have been fruitful in unex- 
pected ways. And this atmosphere of culture, this 
love for ability, fertilized those growths in liter- 
ature which have made all succeeding days seem 
poor and starved. In so centralized a govern- 
ment as that of France, the amenity which wel- 
comes literature, the peaceful ambition which 
desires a monument for itself through the glories 
of genius, beamed from the Tuileries with sunlike 
stimulus to every growth of mind. Indifference, 
discouragement, these will annul the genius which 
might have illustrated a throne. In this respect, 
the Empire and the period of which we speak 
were in painful contrast. Though much careful 
and delicate work was done under the Empire, 
the product rather of the universal desire through- 
out the world for artistic excellence, and prompt 
and liberal payment was given for its master- 
pieces, yet this absence of the sunshine of royalty, 
the quickening power of recognition in high 



ARY SCHEFFER. 315 

places which genius needs and aims for, made 
the general work under the rule of Louis Napo- 
leon mechanical and soulless. But the earlier 
days of the reign of Louis Philippe knew an en- 
thusiasm for all products of mind which France 
had not seen since the setting of that royal sun, 
the Grand Monarque. And both in literature 
and art there were new seeds in the soil, new 
relations with nature and books, which added not 
a little to all the court was doing. The old 
school of painting ceased to satisfy. Paris was 
filled with young men seeking fresh avenues to 
light and life, and round them was an enthusias- 
tic swarm of devotees which hailed each new suc- 
cess with the most ardent acclamations. David 
and Girodet, the painters of a false ideal, had had 
their day ; De Marne and all the tribe of smooth 
conventional landscape painters were shelved to 
make way for the new men, and around them 
raged a battle of opinion. The new must al- 
ways fight its way, especially when the strong 
places are held by the disciples of routine and 
academic formula. 

The trumpet sounded from camp to camp, and 
we feel a glow, even now, remembering the hot 
words of welcome, the ardent adhesion, of Th^o- 



316 CHBQUER-WOEK. 

phile Gautier, Jules Janin, and many another 
pupil of the new school, as some glowing master- 
piece of Descamps, some powerful landscape of 
Jules Dupr^, or vivid skirmish by Delacroix, at- 
tracted the curious crowd at the yearly exposition 
in the Louvre. 

Painters of renown, the men who succeeded, 
had always loved nature, and their success was 
in the main in proportion to the amount of truth 
they told of her. They gave something of her 
charm, touched with reverence the hem of her 
garment. It was enougli for their time, but not 
enough for the piercing eyes, the beating heart of 
that new era. Men of genius were no longer con- 
tent to pay a placid and weak tribute to her 
divinity. The new men crowded about her, tore 
from her her secrets, looked up long and bravely 
in her face, and the more they worshipped felt the 
more encouraged by her smiles. 

The sentiment so often called that attribute 
of our time, the love of nature, was demanding 
more truth and a deeper, higher expression, a 
something on the canvas which was to reveal the 
intimacy of this new relation. 

Once it had been said that Frenchmen cared 
little for the beauties of landscape : certainly the 



ART SCHEFFEB. 31T 

crowd "which thronged the formal alleys of Ver- 
sailles, Vhich thought Le N6tre had done some- 
thing better with his clipped trees than the good 
God had made for men in his disorderly forests, 
knew little of it. If a Frenchman visited Switz- 
erland, he glanced at the helle horreur of moun- 
tain and ravine, nor felt quite safe till he found 
again the familiar trottoir under his feet. And if 
he cared to embellish his room with a landscape, 
he had pretty clouds of rose above an insipid line 
of fiat trees, under which a sportsman might be 
pointing at something with his right hand, or 
where little women in pretty attitudes of aston- 
ishment were bathing in a decorous pool : all 
much as if it were a Sevres plate. But the new 
men thought quite differently. They loved the 
tangle and surprises of nature ; they poured a 
real sunshine upon trunk and every laden bough, 
found the secret of mysterious and transparent 
shadows, insisted upon making each object in the 
landscape keep its place ; and so well they did it 
that when photography was invented, and nature 
was caught in the act, each new photograph of a 
wood scene brought out the exclamation, " How 
like Dupr^ ! " and later, " How like Diaz, and 
Bousseau 1 " 



318 CHEQUER-WORK. 

And the figure painters no longer drew from 
the theatre and the ballet those cheap children of 
fancy which till then had sufficed ; but they 
watched the Breton peasant girl as she entered 
the holy portal with looks of reverence, or stood 
near her in the field while the midday sun 
threw her shortened shadow upon the stubble. 
Like Backhuysen, that son of the great minia- 
turist of the first Empire, Isabey, launched forth 
when the waves were high, in the fishing boat of 
Dieppe, to look, as they came, the surges in the 
face, and returning, studied the saline groups, of 
women and sailors about the beached barque 
whose yellow mast cut aslant the quivering dis- 
tance of ancient houses in the seaport town. 



II. 



WHEN THE OLB PABIS WAS NOT DEAD AND THE NEW NOT 
THOUGHT OF. — DESCAMPS, HUGO, DUMAS, JANIN, AND 
SUE. 

Then it was that a Frenchman, Descamps, left 
his dear Paris, visited the East and brought home 
with him those shadowy groups, those squares of 
sunlit wall, those arabesques and mysteries of 



AET SCHEFFER. 319 

open doors and sombre corridors, and Paris tin- 
gled with a new sensation. 

And Horace Vernet, the prince of battle-paint- 
ers, could send his camels reeling with odalisques 
from the battle-smoke of Smala, for he had been 
to Africa to carefully draw and study all that 
Algiers could offer. 

The log-g-ie of Raphael betray how little that 
great man knew of the camel, and for long years 
after him Europe knew no more ; but Yernet 
could plant his shadowy Arab against the blanch- 
ing sky, safely seated above the whistling tassels 
of crimson, while the Post of the desert, the 
camel, flies by you as if you beheld him in a mir- 
ror. And to him unexpectedly we owe the first 
religious picture erer bathed in the real Syrian 
sunshine. If in his Rebecca at the Well there is 
yet something of the theatre, still the long ex- 
tended neck of the patriarch, as he drinks from 
her pitcher, is alive with the thirst which no one 
of the old masters could have conceived when 
treating such a subject. 

France, in the hour of humiliation, owed much 
to what the men of that time did for her. They 
snatched for her the laurel wreath which the 
world extended them. She still proudly wears it, 



320 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

and as we gaze, its shadow half conceals the 
tears in the sorrowing eyes beneath. She lives 
on the fame of that day. It was to her an Au- 
gustan age, and we willingly pardon the bour- 
geois clumsiness, the fatal family selfishness 
in Louis Philippe, while we gratefully remember 
the burst of light, intelligence, and beauty with 
which he dowered the world. 

And there was equal activity, equal enthusiasm, 
among the men who held the pen. They too were 
making a dividing line between themselves and 
the classic insipidities of the Academy. They 
were fighting the same battle as the painters. 
There were two hosts, but warring under the same 
banner, and capturing the crumbling fortresses 
of the past. Their captains hailed each other as 
they moved, and encouraged their ardent ranks, 
and the names of Victor Hugo, Delacroix, of 
Balzac and Dupr^, of Ingres and Th^ophile Gau- 
tier, of Delaroche and De Musset, of Lamartine 
and Rousseau, echoed like watchwords, indiffer- 
ently, in the army of reformers. 

If Descamps' Setting the Night-watch in Smyr- 
na was a herald of the new day, a condemnation 
of the old belief, so was Victor Hugo's preface 
to a play of Shakespeare equally a battle won in 



AEY SCHEFFER. 321 

this new crusade. Happy days of youthful zeal, 
of contagious enthusiasm, that breath of young 
life in which miracles are accomplished ! 

Those of us who knew Paris then remember 
how all this fiery youth welcomed, as the work of 
their greatest leader, greater even to the popular 
imagination than the somewhat austere Hugo, the 
play of Dumas pere, Antony, and the same wel- 
come was extended to the new audiences of Vic- 
tor Hugo, naively believed, by their author and 
all his long-haired clientele to be Shakespearian. 
The theatre was invaded at an early hour, so 
early that the hats under the seats held in ban- 
dana handkerchiefs the sandwiches, the pates, 
and the cognac which converted the entr'actes 
into a jubilant, turbulent indoor picnic ; and the 
actors and actresses, trembling with the universal 
fever, were caressed, applauded, and crowned, 
when the play was over, by their worshipping 
adorers. This literary and artistic epidemic pos- 
sessed Bohemia, the artists, poets in the shell, 
and youths ambitious of the feuilleton, with the 
same desperate devotion which, in other days, 
precipitated them upon a barricade, or drove 
before them the pensioned but half-reluctant 
defenders of law and order. 

21 



322 CHEQUER-WORK. 

And in those days Jules Janin, like some ivy- 
crowned Bacchus, waved his sceptre and shook 
his grelots from his throne in the Debats, while 
many a Silenus and gay Bacchante followed in 
his train. 

That was the time when, between an omelette 
and a bottle of Beaune, his merry companions, not 
silencing for his genius their quips and sallies, 
while the cigar-smoke rolled in blue aureoles 
round each youthful head, that lusty product of 
Africa and Paris, the great Dumas pere, would 
dash off a chapter of his Mousquetaires,- telling 
his tale, as a canary sings, the better for the 
noise. 

Or Eugene Sue, in his fashion, would dive into 
the hells of Paris, with his Rudolphe, to fetch, 
unsullied in her purity, or at least in her inner 
love of goodness, Fleur de Marie, from the dens 
of infamy, while the Chourineur, with scarlet 
face, clicked his glass of petit bleu with a brother 
bandit, in the stifling, fiery halls of the Tapis- 
franc. Some of us, urged by the general curios- 
ity, visited these night-nests of criminals, and 
can report how true was the picture with which 
Eugene Sue had startled fashionable Paris. 

Those were the days which Thackeray remem- 



ARY SCHEFFER. 323 

bered with so much pleasant regret, when he ate 
his provincial bouillabaisse and 

Dipped his nose in the Gascon wine. 

Those were the days when, happy in his youth- 
ful reverence, he looked up to admire, and was 
not looked up to as yet, or burdened with laurels 
twined around aching brows. 

The old Paris was not yet dead, nor the new 
thought of ; the name of Haussmann sent back 
no echo from the tortuous streets, innocent of 
trottoirs, and the revolutionary lantern still dan- 
gled in their centre. Those streets were still 
the streets of the Fronde, where the beautiful 
Longueville had ridden, perhaps, with the author 
of the Maxims gallantly bowing at her side. 
Then, where the Bastille had been, the gigantic 
elephant still towered, to the delight -of the 
gamin, and the astonishment of the mystified 
traveller. Then asphalte was not ; the dandy 
paced luxuriously before the Caf^ de Paris, or 
issued replet, a tooth-pick between his teeth, with 
the perfume of the Eocher de Cancale still linger- 
ing about him. Then the ladies wore g'ig'ot 
sleeves, little aprons, in the morning, with pock- 
ets, and short dresses showing the dainty Pa- 



324 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

risian foot, -which could cross the street without 
a smirch upon the spotless white of its stocking. 
Then the hair was dressed in great puffs behind, 
and little sausage-like rolls on the temples. 

And then the petit crSve was called a lion, and 
he wore long hair, a gaudy waistcoat, and tight 
trousers, so clinging to his varnished boots, held 
in place by a strap before the heel, that all had to 
come off together. That was the hour of le petit 
groom ; when children, inconceivably small, hung 
on to the backs of whirling cabriolets, and the 
smaller the boy, the more stylish the equipage. 
When Tom Thumb visited Paris, it was not much 
astonished, for it had seen little men, no bigger 
than he, in full livery, till littleness had lost its 
charm. 

But Mr. Oatlin with his Indians made a true 
sensation. The Indians were pronounced worthy 
of the author of Atala, and Catlin, by his simple 
directness in the portraiture of these strange 
visitors won praise in high quarters. And that 
was the day of the sweet love-singing of the 
inspired Sicilian, who divided for a time with his 
robuster brother of the South the welcome of 
Paris ; but when the massive and joyous Rossini 
clasped the pale, thin hand of Bellini, he must 



ARY SCHEFFER. 325 

have instinctively felt on how slender a thread all 
that lovely melody was hung. One could then 
see, at some table d'h6te,the careless wig of the 
great maestro reach nearly to his twinkling eyes, 
and admire that mouth, whence smiles and sun- 
shine inundated the table ; while haply, not far off, 
the grave, careworn, ascetic face of Meyerbeer 
might be noticed in vivid contrast. Then the me- 
lodious postillion of Lombardy, Rubini, melted 
pearls in Paris's cup of pleasure ; and that lesser, 
but much loved postillion, Ohollet, as the postillion 
of Longjumeau, cracked his whip at the delight- 
ful Vaudevilles then in the Place de la Bourse. 

Then the Vert-vert was sold to the excited pro- 
vincial, hurrying to his place in the fauteuil d^or- 
chestre, impatient for that slap from a wooden 
'block dearer to him than the music of the spheres. 

Then ennuySs gentlemen from America filled 
their time up by going to the outskirts of Paris to 
look into a hole in the ground famous as being 
the new Artesian Well of Grenelle. Then the 
enterprising Boston girl would climb the tower of 
NStre Dame and look out among the gargoyles, 
to see where the hunchback hung with livid face, 
or try to find in every young and dusky Bohemian 
girl the original Esmeralda. 



326 CHEQUER-WOBK. 

Then Giroux, unambitious, kept his treasures 
in the little dark Rue du Coq St. Honor^, 
and had not yet blazed forth in the splendor of 
plate glass upon the sunny boulevards. Then 
Binder made the carriages, and Susse sold little 
Descamps and Constables, Gdricaults, and bril- 
liant Delacroix for what now we should call a 
song. Then his ample portfolio held the sober, 
rich aquarelles of Hubert, or the picturesque 
audacities of the younger Isabey. 

Then, too, the great Chevet reigned at the 
entrance of the Palais Royal, and the hungry 
beggar could take his Barmecide feast the wrong 
side of the glass, from massive pdtes where the 
coal-black truffles lodged like pudding-stone in a 
conglomerate of richness, or the silvery salmon 
tried to hide from his gaze behind long lines of 
ananas ; and round the open door, in careless 
profusion, lay great baskets of ecrevisses and 
oysters, while, like miniature stacks of wheat, the 
long white-stemmed asparagus of Paris nodded 
above. 

And then the grisette had not wholly faded, 
for did not Beranger still encourage her with 
his smile of bonhomie from his suburban villa ? 
And then she and her etudiant danced in the 



AEY SCHEFPER. 327 

open air among the lilac bushes, a crescent of 
many-colored lamps dangling above, in the fa- 
mous garden of Tivoli, which Paris one day, 
hungry like a growing boy, devoured at a single 
meal. 

Then the Englishman on the stage was made 
to say " Goddam," and wore his little white cape 
over his prodigious overcoat ; and then, alas ! in 
his unsavory romances, Paul de Eock would 
make good-natured fun of the German whom the 
Emperor had vanquished, and dreamed not of the 
future he was preparing, in memory of that 
humiliation. 

And then the weary American brought home 
from his banker's, in St. Georga's Square, a pon- 
derous sack of silver dollars, wondering that the 
g-ibier of Vidocq had not nibbled at his treasure, 
as he stumbled, trying to disguise his anxiety, 
homeward, and reached in safety his little apart- 
ment, in Paris's best quarter, where his tiny 
salon and comfortable bedroom cost him but five 
francs a day. If the gentlemen at Washington 
had been in his shoes, they might have thought 
twice before they made their new silver idol, by 
order of the king, and bade us to fall down and 
worship it. 



328 CHEQUER-WORK. 

California upset the money world, Australia 
tilted it in her turn, and values, as I have seen 
paper whirled to the skies in great fires, rose up 
from the smoke of battle and civil war, and left 
the world in a craze of misconception. 

And this was the time that Lamartine sang, 
nightingale-like, from the bosquets of his ances- 
tral home, of the simple charms of the country 
to the music of falling brooks and the whispers of 
forest leaves. And following in the footsteps 
of Cooper, Eugene Sue was trying to fire the 
Parisian heart with the glories of salt water in 
many a marine novel, and his friend and accom- 
plice, Gudin, was trying to do the same thing in 
many a battle piece and picture of marine adven- 
ture. Others, again, were following in the foot- 
steps of the Scotch wizard ; and Cinq-Mars was 
welcomed as the best of the brood, and Casimir 
de la Yigne, its author, leaving his modest nest at 
Havre de Grace, came to Paris to seek his share 
in the welcome and ovation France gave to her 
many successful sons. 

And in these peaceful days Queen Poniard was 
somewhat talked of, and the Louisiana debt 
debated about by ignorant senators. And then, 
in the chamber of deputies, might be seen in fre- 



AEY SCHEFFER. 329 

qiient conflict the two great champions of the 
old and the new ; there the great lawyer with 
massive features, his coat buttoned across his 
broad breast with an air of battle, and something 
of the chivalry of the old nobility he believed in 
and defended, would be answered in cold, suc- 
cessful, resolute sentences by the Puritan of the 
time, the gifted man of Geneva. 

Guizot, not his rival's equal in eloquence, had 
the force of an intimate conviction. He stood 
for the present, his rival stood for the past. To 
see Guizot and Berryer confronted was some- 
thing like watching a battle where Cromwell and 
Prince Rupert were both in the same field ; and 
though the icy tenacity of Guizot, and the force 
of circumstances, bore down the gallant cham- 
pion of chivalry and of faded France, yet that 
very tenacity could not save, but lost, its possessor. 
Guizot, raide with all the pride of successful 
Puritanism, knew not how to bend ; and, as he 
knew not how, fate broke him, as snaps an iron 
bar, and with him the king he stood for. 

All the glories added to Yersailles, all the 
wealth of art and literature he had fostered, could 
not prevent the bourgeois king from sinking 
daily in the esteem of his subjects. A carica- 



330 CHEQUER-WOBK. 

turist found, in his hair brushed to an ascending 
top-knot, and his expanding cheeks, a resem- 
blance to a pear, which, though apparently not 
very funny, shook with laughter the Paris that 
then was ; and when, in that workshop of ridi- 
cule, the general laugh turns upon any one, he 
is in danger. 

When reform banquets were held, instead of, 
as with us, allowing malcontents to ventilate 
their asperity, the haughty Guizot insisted upon 
repression ; but in vain even the ladies of the 
salons he frequented besought him to take care ; 
still he was inflexible, and, chalked upon the wall 
of a building in the Rue de la Paix, the words, 
" Yive la R^forme ! " — could be seen still a year 
after, when that dynasty and all its servants had 
been swept into the abyss. 

Paris was filled with bourgeois soldiers. Every 
one belonged to the National Guard ; but both 
they and their bourgeois king had no stomach 
for a fight when it came. Louis Philippe said he 
could not and would not fire upon his people. 
The hot blood which as some say had made him 
the hero of Jemappes was cooled now ; and the 
cheery face, which had kept its smile more than 
once when the assassin's bullet left it unharmed, 



AEY SCHEFPER. 331 

had lost, it was thought, in the anguish of the 
grippe, all its former confidence. 

It is pleasant to know that when that little day- 
was over, and the royal drama played out, the life- 
long friend of the family was by to give what 
succor he could. Scheffer it was who, as the 
lithograph represents, handed into the fiacre he 
had procured the mysterious Mr. Smith whom 
the Tuileries were to know no longer. At the 
same moment Scheffer's future wife, a resident 
of the palace where her aged husband dwelt as 
tvitor to the Comte de Paris, was wandering from 
room to room, amazed at the loneliness, unable 
to get an answer to her bell, or to find a servant, 
till at last she reached the great empty Salle des 
Marchaux, with its columns of scagliola, and its 
long line of busts of the heroes of the Empire. 
No one was there ; nothing moved or lived. 
Yes, something moves : it is a bit of blue, 
behind one of the yellow columns. Madame 
Baudran approached it and found it to be a 
saucy gamin in a blue blouse, who mockingly 
saluted her. 

" What are you doing here, my child ? " asked 
the lady. 

" What are you doing here yourself, Madame ? " 



332' CHEQUEE-WOEK. 

" I am here by the king's order, in obedience 
to my duty." 

" And I, Madame, am here for my own plea- 
sure. Do you not know the king has fled, and the 
people have entered the Tuileries ? " 

And there they were, a mob of gamins, 
with the rest of the crew of revolution, danc- 
ing up and down, bouncing in and out of 
the gilded fauteuils, pulling the beards of the 
silent, indignant effigies in marble ; frolicking, 
insolent, insupportable — a pitiable memory for 
gods and men. All pity ended soon after in 
disgust at a colossal debauch in the cellars 
below, where, instead of blood, the wine flowed 
in torrents, till the unworthy victors lay in 
a drunken sleep upon the field which they had 
won. 

A sad and cruel day for Prance, as she soon 
found it to be. Though the singing birds for a 
while were not wholly mute, though the love 
of nature yet beat in the great heart of the 
artist, though the words of fire were not at 
once quenched upon the page of poet or prose 
writer, yet, little by little, these harmonies 
ceased, those colors faded, that glowing page 
smouldered, and, above the long pause of 



ARY SCHEFFER. 666 

Genius, could now only be heard the tread of 
armed men, the clang of the sabre, and, on 
one dreadful morning, the added thunder of civic 
war. 




XIII. 
THE LUCK OF VAN SPENDIUS. 



XIII. 
THE LUCK OF VAN SPENDIUS. 



/^TTO YAN SPENDIUS was not a happy 
^^^ man. He was of that noble lineage of fa- 
mous Dutch merchants who carried to the ends 
of the earth their enterprise, and founded colo- 
nies there which still survive. The prosperity of 
the house was brought to its height by his ances- 
tor, Gaspar van Spendius, whose riches were 
counted fabulous, and concerning whom the mad- 
dest adventures were narrated. It was said of 
him, that not content, at the request of the Jap- 
anese, with trampling upon the Cross, he lived 
with almost royal magnificence in a seclusion 
which the East permitted, with strange and de- 
voted followers, and, enshrined like a jewel amid 
the dusky throng, shone a beauty from Cashmere, 
the oval of whose perfect face and whose eyes of 
misty splendor had only been seen at rare inter- 
vals by his nearest friends. 



838 CHEQUER-WORK. 

Gaspar had founded at Rotterdam the great 
commercial house which increasingly flourished 
for two or three generations, but now had dwin- 
dled to little more than a name. The stately 
warehouse remained, but it was empty ; the canal, 
which barges once choked, before its ample por- 
tal, with the silks, the spices, the carved ivory of 
the East, was now lonely and silent, save when, at 
stated intervals, a truykshut bore its burden of 
drowsy passengers to Dort or some northward 
town. 

Here, by this silent canal, or in a corner of the 
great quadrangular warehouse, the hapless de- 
scendant of an illustrious past filled with noth- 
ings his useless hours, at times watching with the 
interest of a catastrophe the sailing of chips or 
straws in aimless eddies, as he bent with depend- 
ing legs over the brink of his canal. At times a 
bitterness of baffled ambition rose in his breast, 
and the memory of the past made him fly 
from home and seek from some silent eminence 
glimpses into the great world beyond the town. 
He would sit in the church-tower whole hours, 
his head resting on his hand, while beyond the 
Mouse he watched the reapers, the cattle, which 
Cuyp and Paul Potter have made immortal, and 



THE LUCK OF VAN SPENDIUS. 339 

where some windmill, swinging its busy arms in 
air, or some village spire, blocked themselves 
against the soft pearly sky. Or, with a pang of 
suffocating regret, he let his sight wander down 
the Meuse past the city lines to where in fancy 
he heard the cold gray waves plash against the 
broad bows of incoming fleets, majestic, weighty 
with the indefinable riches of the Orient, while, at 
the stern, every flag bore the escutcheon of the 
house of Yan Spendius. 

But, loafer and vagabond as he had become, he 
still maintained a feeble show of business. Some 
little had been saved from the wreck of the great 
house. The name still had a certain prestige ; 
and on a distant wharf, nearer the sea, a small 
counting-house still bore the sign above its en- 
trance, in little, unambitious letters : " Yan Spen- 
dius & Co." 

Here a young man, of quite other character 
than our hero, was endeavoring to build for him- 
self a fortune where another had been lost. He 
was the partner of Otto, and to him all their 
little business was intrusted. So wholly was he 
master that Otto but rarely disturbed him, or 
looked over the books to find out how they stood. 
He came at times, only to be received with a con- 



840 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

temptuous smile, and a politeness formal and 
exaggerated whicli was evidently directed to the 
name he bore, and not to the personage who 
now owned it. 

Thus confirmed in habits of aimless indolence ^ 
the mind of Otto van Spendius drowsed through 
the long summer days inert as the canal upon 
I which he gazed, empty as the sonorous ware- 
house in which he dwelt. There he had a little 
chamber, garnished with some relics of the olden 
grandeur : deep leather chairs, embossed with the 
family crest ; book-racks of teak or jack-wood, 
in which, amid antique maps carelessly rolled 
up, a few Dutch authors and ancient classics 
held towards you their backs of vellum. Over 
his fireplace was a formidable collection of pipes ; 
above, were cob webbed and venerable chibouques 
and amber-tipped rods of jasmine, but below, 
arrays of the long-stemmed clay pipes of Hol- 
land, pre-eminently cleanly, as are all things 
Dutch ; for each smoking-house has, under an 
open window, a little pyramid of snowy pipe- 
stems, condemned by fastidious nicety after a 
single using. 

It was when buried deep in a family arm-chair, 
while his left hand held suspended his freshly- 



THE LUCK OF VAN SPENDIUS. 341 

lighted pipe, that he could find comfort as no- 
where else, as he gazed into the smoke-wreaths 
as they circled, mounted, and melted their gray- 
films in air. As unsubstantial as these, as up- 
ward, as swiftly-fading, were his dreams. The 
fibre of his mind had relaxed all hold upon the 
present ; there was not muscle enough left to 
grapple with its realities. Action had lost its 
charm and become abhorrent. The incidents of 
every day had for him a secret alarm ; a decision 
became a catastrophe ; and so he eluded life in 
dreams. But in the cloudy volumes round his 
head life had a look which satisfied him ; there he 
was at home, and that airy country refused him 
no honors of citizenship, no riches that it had to 
give. Through this blue medium he could see 
vistas of delight, rich with all possibilities of opu- 
lence and power. There he dwelt in his castles 
of the air, where every good genius did him 
homage and tendered obedience. There are 
many entrances to this enchanted domain. 
Dreamers in all countries have managed to find 
one, and though over its inviting portal, whether in 
misty characters be written mandragora, poppy, 
hemp, or tobacco, each entrance leads but to a 
common paradise — that inner isle where the lotus 



342 CHEQUER-WORK. 

and molj are the bread men eat, till earth's best 
feast becomes tasteless or abhorrent. 

As he smoked and dreamed, Otto felt himself 
the equal of his formidable ancestor. A superb 
portrait of the founder of his house, by Rem- 
brandt van Rhyn, was one of his chief posses- 
sions. But, though proud of it, it humiliated 
him. Its masculine, bearded face, above which 
was a cap, lit by a single jewel, seemed, as it 
regarded him, always to reproach him. He could 
not by any curiosity in the treatment of the furry 
cape or the rich chain-work braided across the 
ample breast escape those questioning eyes. He 
would retire, silent and abashed, before the gaze 
of the ancestor who had disinherited him. But 
when the fumes of his pipe had hung with purple 
the chambers of his brain, with lordly confidence 
he felt that he could face those terrible eyes. 
His height, his bulk felt expanded till he thought 
he could look his relative squarely in the face. 
But he never did, he never tried to do so. It was 
only in his leathern chair that he was king. He 
knew it, and only there assumed his royalty. 

Otto had one singular custom, natural enough 
to a good-natured, yielding soul, without the 
honorable and practised selfishness which comes 



THE LUCK OP VAN SPENDIUS. 343 

from a struggle with others. One person believed 
in him, — old Katinka, the family cook, who had 
attached herself to the house when, in her youth, 
it had known better days. She chose not to 
think she despised him, but felt rather a certain 
pitiful, motherly regard for his incapacity and ill- 
fortune as for one who deserved better, and to 
whom the gods were unjust. She loved to please 
him by little attentions, a respect for one who 
gloried in the name of Van Spendius, and, while 
careful to keep an old-time distance between her 
and himself, she was allowed at times to approach 
with little words of endearment and familiarity. 
She could touch and open by a word his heart 
through the key of familiar memories of the 
greatness of other days ; and she was fond of 
making a kind of cruller, from a recipe of her 
own, aromatic beyond the reach of caraways, by 
an infusion of which she alone knew the secret. 

On certain days in the week when they came 
smoking from her oven, he was wont, by a sign 
from his open window, to draw into the street 
below all the g-aminerie of the neighborhood. 
Scores of ruddy, round, expectant faces, a forest 
of extended, imploring hands, were lifted in the 
mild Dutch sunshine upward, as, like quoits shot 



344 CHEQUER-WORK. 

by some skilful hand, the crullers sought out old 
favorites in. the crowd, or some boy who looked 
hungrier than the rest, till finally all were sup- 
plied. Then, like a cloud of sparrows, with 
shouts and antics of delight, the childish rout 
would disappear, — and with a sigh, closing his 
lattice. Otto resumed his pipe, to dream over the 
joys of boyhood and speculate how each youthful 
Yan Spendius had looked as he spent those happy 
hours. 

No spirit which is alive can contentedly endure 
such stagnation as that in which Otto had 
learned to dwell. Crushed under its imposed 
load, its weight of useless hours, the soul within 
him at times turned in anguish, like Enceladus 
under Etna, and his brain became an open cra- 
ter of flaming lava. It was at such times, then, 
as we have said, that he made his escape to soli- 
tary heights, in lonely rambles, or impatient pac- 
ings around the great quadrangular galleries of his 
ancestral warehouse. It was during one of these 
obsessions of raging discontent that, with echo- 
ing feet whirling in and out of the stripes of 
moon-light that fluttered into the cavern-like 
quadrangle, in the midst of the tortures of self- 
condemnation, the agonies of hopeless irresolution, 



THE LUCK OP VAN SPENDIUS. 345 

he stopped suddenly short. A new idea came 
into his mind, and at its coming, like so many 
spectres, all his tormentors fled. He suddenly 
noticed a door that he thought he had never seen 
before. It was strange, it was incredible, but he 
felt certain he had never entered that room. 
Curiosity, and a feeling like exultation, made his 
step elastic, his movements quick and active. 
He flew to his little chamber, lighted a brass 
lantern, with which he often guided his steps at 
night round the neighborhood, and drawing from 
its nail a huge bunch of keys, he narrowly in- 
spected them. They were of all lengths and 
sizes, simple as pistol-barrels, or rich with reticu- 
lated steel work and a grandeur which no work- 
man can give such now. He selected and drew 
together the keys he knew he had never used, 
and, with his lantern lit, was soon before the 
newly discovered door. 

At the first touch of the first key the door 
opened, though, while turning in the ancient 
wards, there came from the lock a sharp and 
angry shriek as of protest that a solitude should 
be invaded which time had made for ever sacred. 
The hinges reluctantly permitted the door to 
open, and when it was ajar, Otto suddenly 



346 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

stepped back. There came full to his sense a 
confusion of strange and unfamiliar odors, pleas- 
ant withal, and acting upon his imagination 
like the fulfilment of his hopes ; yet all so 
smothered in a dead and enervating air that he 
dared not enter. He threw the door back upon 
its hinges to allow the living air to displace the 
heavy, stifling, tomb-like atmosphere before he 
entered. He went not far in then, but, moving 
his lantern from side to side, he was content to 
see an indefinite accumulation of goods, a vague 
richness, on which, here and there, with touches 
of fiery color, the light of the lantern fell : a 
huddle of confused splendor, all particulars lost 
in the dust and shadows which he felt unequal to 
penetrate. He gazed around for a while, with a 
confused sense of happiness and possession. His 
imagination accepted the vagueness, his indolence 
was unequal to notice the particulars. " And it 
is so late," he said to himself ; " it is enough to 
know that I have entered into my inheritance. 
This is the lost and forgotten treasure-house of 
Gaspar van Spendius, and I am the heir ! " 

He carefully locked the door again, and though 
the shadows and the lights of the gallery seemed 
to hide hands which pointed at him, while figures 



THE LUCK OF VAN SPENDIUS. 347 

glided past, and as the wind without rattled on the 
great skylight till its panes shook in their sock- 
ets, and whispering voices, eager, questioning, 
insulting, chased him to his room ; yet, when 
again in his familiar chair, and from the pipe-bowl 
he was once more building his city of the clouds, 
he felt a deep contentment, the sense of a duty ful- 
filled ; and later, as he sank to sleep, there min- 
gled with his dreams a trust that his visions were 
to be no longer elusive and transitory, but as 
substantial as his heart desired. 

The next day he opened his eyes with an as- 
surance which made the sunshine doubly bright. 
His life now had a motive congenial to his tem- 
perament, the occupation of taking possession 
without toil. But he loved to dally with his new 
hope. Certain that his fish would be landed, he 
played with it cunningly through all the deep 
pools and eddies of his thought. He resolved to 
be in no hurry. He dressed himself with scru- 
pulous neatness as for an important interview, 
and his after-breakfast pipe seemed to him the 
sweetest he had known for years, though he for- 
got to build his Spanish castles in the swelling 
smoke, for his memory held a vision before which 
they looked indeed unreal. 



348 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

But soon curiosity mastered him, and, after 
proper precautions to make sure he was not 
overlooked, he unslung his bunch of keys, and, 
stealthily gliding to the newly-discovered door, 
let himself in. There was a dull, imperfect light 
stealing through the decayed window-shutters, in 
which, while little was hidden, every thing 
discerned was enveloped in a vague poetry. He 
again, from his station near the door, contemplated 
his treasures. 

He saw rows of Oriental boxes, whose odor 
spoke of sandal-wood and cinnamon ; an array of 
flagons, kegs, and packages, with much of that 
orderliness which in Holland is a religion. Here 
and there were rich shawls with deep tortoise-shell 
tints, and not far off marrowy crapes, corn-colored 
and wrinkled. Silks faintly green, faintly purple, 
but the tints all delicately negative and refined, 
had burst from their too strict imprisonment. 
He longed to touch and caress these, and to find 
what goodly things the other parcels held ; but he 
refused himself this pleasure, for the sense of his 
dreams still held him, and he chose to contem- 
plate his aifluence from afar, as had been the cus- 
tom of his mind. 

So his eye wandered over his possessions till 



THE LUCK OF VAN SPENDIUS. 349 

satiated with splendor. An image of the room 
was forming in his mind by which he knew he 
could recall it, and so enjoy his ownership as a 
whole, and without the discomfort of the per- 
plexing reality. Yet much still remained con- 
fused to him. In the corners and on shelves, 
were a tangle of lustrous color, soft surfaces and 
embroidered figures revealing themselves dimly ; 
while in the shadow, the light sparkled on bits of 
Oriental armor, crooked creases, wavy lines of 
Damascus blades, ropes of amber, branching fans 
of coral, or on the metal studs of belts and girdles, 
mysteriously delighting while they intrigued his 
spirit. And in spite of the fresh air he had in- 
troduced, there still clung to every thing that 
perfume of the East in which strange and beauti- 
ful things seem to exist naturally, a land where 
the mangosteen is the king of fruits, and where 
spices float on every breeze. It seemed to him as 
if he were eating Lychee nuts, that fruit whose 
gustativeness is almost an odor. Traders still 
brought to Rotterdam, in their cargoes, specimens 
of this dainty. He loved them well, for they fed 
his dreams with richness, and wafted him to their 
country, only to be visited in thought. The en- 
trancing perfumes enveloped him like sleep, and it 



350 CHEQUER-WORK. 

was not till he felt himself too drowsy to stand still, 
that, with a quick motion, selecting two ohjects 
which had piqued his curiosity the most, he swiftly 
advanced and seized them. One was a shining, 
high-shouldered bottle, whose quaint outside 
seemed a pledge of the excellence within ; the other 
a writing-desk, which, dusty as it was, had fascin- 
ated his sight, for he saw on its top the old- 
fashioned monogram in brass of his famed 
ancestor, " G. Y. S." 

With one of these under each arm he retreated 
to his den. 

He first examined the desk. Time had loosened 
the lock which held it, and it was easily opened. 
He found in it, without examining them, care- 
fully tied parcels of old letters, yellow with age, 
a note-book, equally old, and glancing at which 
he saw formidable columns of figures, and lists 
of cargoes of materials, which he cared not to 
examine, the more that in the corner of the desk 
there was something which fascinated and held 
him fast. It was a Spanish dollar, fresh from 
the mint, and so bright that it seemed to grow by 
looking at it, and to fill the whole room with its 
splendor. The hand of Otto instinctively stole 
over it, and it was soon at the bottom of the 



THE LUCK OF VAN SPENDIUS. 361 

pocket of his capacious Dutch trousers. Beside 
it was a miniature, set in pearl, around which 
one ebon coil of shining hair made a fitting con- 
trast. In the timid, tentative fashion of Indian 
artists was painted on ivorj a girlish face. Its 
tint was a tender citron, bistred in the shadows, 
and across the slight shoulders a necklace of 
pearls, larger than those of the setting, hung 
their milky galaxy ; the eyes and hair were of the 
same tint as the braid around the picture. 

He was uncomfortable at the thought of thus 
invading the privacy of his ancestor, and he 
turned his face in terror, fearing to behold the 
questioning eye he had learned to dread. But he 
felt through all his being a glow, a brightness, 
which he knew came from the splendid dollar he 
had appropriated. Hastily shutting the desk and 
seizing his hat, he went forth, unable to master 
his triumphant exultation. He felt the dollar 
warm in the hollow of his hand, and that hand 
secure in the darkness of his pocket. As he 
walked, he held his head high, and the unwonted 
brightness in his face drew general attention. 
People stared at him and thought, perhaps, long 
brooding on mischance had turned his head. 
Some accosted him with compassion, but his 



352 CHEQUEE-WOEK. 

reply was so haughty and insolent that they with- 
drew in silence. The urchins he had loved 
stared at him confusedly, and he told them to 
come to his window in an hour, for this was the 
day of crullers, and that they would be better 
than usual. He then made straight for his count- 
ing-house, where he found his partner writing at 
a desk, who frowned slightly at the unaccountable 
cheerfulness of Otto, and said, sarcastically : 
" You are quite a stranger. The wharf does not 
see you often now ! " 

To which, in shrill and angry tones, Otto re- 
plied': " Little care I for you, the counting-house, 
and your plodding work ; and I say," shaking his 
fist in the face of his startled partner, " damn 
the wharf ! " 

After that he hurriedly left, his long-repressed 
conceit mantling his features with a visible fer- 
mentation. He trod on air, and he could have 
trod on the necks of the acquaintances he met, 
who had for so long humiliated him by their 
slight or patronage. 

As he entered his little room he was met by 
the fumes he well knew, and an extended tray of 
mighty crullers, above which beamed the broad 
benignant face of his laughing cook. He imme- 



THE LUCK OF VAN SPENDIUS. 853 

diately nibbled at the brown flanks of a cruller, 
when, feeling the need of a liquid accompani- 
ment, he remembered his high-shouldered, mys- 
terious flagon. Without breaking the antiquated 
seal upon it, he got out the cork easily with a 
fork, and poured out a wineglass full. The 
aroma was overpowering. Its deliciousness was 
such to the taste that a few drops saturated the 
system with happiness. Time had smoothed its 
intensity, but only to furnish a mellower and 
more searching richness. Giddy before, this new 
intoxication made him childish with glee, and 
remembering his boys, who already had gathered 
beneath the window noisy and expectant, he dis- 
played to them his ample tray of crullers. As 
he tossed them to the crowd, he sprinkled each 
with a few drops of the magic liquor. Its effect 
upon them was wonderful. It seemed to fire 
their brains with a joy too great for their young 
nerves. They bounded, they leaped, they shouted, 
and then dispersed in groups through the town, 
bearing with them a confusion and tumult which 
drew all the other boys and their alarmed mothers 
and nurses into, its vortex. Rarely has the 
somnolency of a Dutch town been so rudely 
invaded : there was something uncanny and dia- 



354 CHEQUER-WORK. 

bolic about it. The Piper of Hamelin, one might 
have thought, had been in every drop of that 
fatal bottle, drawing crowds after it wherever it 
went. 

But the effervescence was not lasting, nor the 
consequences to the boys injurious, yet most of 
them had a headache the next day, and vague 
remembrances of a frolic, which looked to them 
like a dream. While the game of madcap sport 
was going on, certain grave magistrates, certain 
anxious mothers, came to Otto witli remon- 
strances and demands for explanation, for the 
boys had many of them been found with bits of 
crullers in their liands, from which issued an 
unusual and penetrating odor. 

Otto looked at them in a vague way across the 
smoke of his long pipe, but answered nothing. 
A mysterious smile was all the reply the anxious 
visitors could obtain, as he silently puffed and 
puffed. Before the shades of night fell they 
had all left, and silence, as usual, was master 
of the place. 

He could not, after his excitement, comfortably 
visit the dreamland he loved. He was restless 
and unquiet, and an uncontrollable impulse, a 
hunger for the sight, if possible, of another sun- 



THE LUCK OF VAN SPENDIUS. 355 

like dollar, carried him again to his treasure- 
room. Now he was wholly changed from the 
sleepy Dutchman who had lingered there before. 
He flashed his lantern upon every object. Like 
waves of gold, the creamy silks fluttered into 
light, and withdrew. Like a cloud of sparks, the 
whirling lantern • evoked points of brilliancy on 
sword and halberd, helmet and shirt of mail. 
Every thing gleamed, glittered, and sparkled, and 
yet he felt there was much there which the lan- 
tern could not stimulate or brighten. Groping 
with his hands, he found upon the floor, against 
the wall, a long line of colorless kegs stretching 
into the darkness, and all alike. He tried to lift 
one, and could not ; but he succeeded in rolling it 
into the middle of the room. He looked upon 
tlie unpromising exterior, he caressed the damp 
surface with his hand, till suddenly a rage of 
curiosity, a maddening desire to know more, pos- 
sessed him. His head swam, his eyes glittered 
with covetous ness, he lost command of himself, 
and, rushing amidst the armor, he seized a battle- 
axe, and dealt with it such a shower of lusty 
blows that the fastenings of the old keg gave way, 
and its contents spilled themselves. Exhausted, 
trembling all over, Otto sank to the floor and 



356 CHEQUER-WORK. 

gazed. In little shining mounds, broad pools 
of brightness, or caught like stars between tiie 
yielding staves, was the dollar he had found, only 
not alone, but in such multitudes that he de- 
spaired of counting them. He pushed them 
about, washed his hands in them, threw himself 
upon them to embrace and caress them, till the 
passion of possession, by its reaction, left him 
exhausted and weak. Slowly withdrawing with 
his lantern, he turned his head backward, held by 
a silver thread in his brain that he was unwind- 
ing from the shining heap. He left the room, and 
locked it with double care, feeling as if the world 
must be filled with eyes which saw, filled with 
tongues which whispered his discovery. An iron 
gate must fall between him and the world's assail- 
ing curiosity. He already felt isolated and un- 
happy in his lonely tower of silver. Something 
more than the frenzy of possession or the fears of 
losing, pauses of doubt, pangs of remorse that 
he had invaded without leave the secret of the 
treasure-house of his great ancestor, made him 
groan aloud, and cower for long with sleepless 
eyes beneath his coverlid. He could not bear this 
rest which was unrest, this sleepless bed, this 
tranquillity of the body, when his mind was torn 



THE LUCK OF VAN SPENDIUS. 357 

with anxiety and distress. The wind rose, and, 
as it beat upon his window, brought with it a great 
shudder, as if an invisible sea were breaking 
upon his breast. As the voice of the storm rose 
and sank, it seemed to mutter imprecations, or to 
wail in passionate reproof. He could not bear it, 
and, hastily dressing himself, unable to find com- 
fort in his room, he wandered into the gusty 
corridors. 

Night is what we make it. It brings balsam 
to the lover, but terror to the plunderer and 
thief. Its moon can look a complacent sympa- 
thetic companion, or bear the scared face, to 
the robber, of an accomplice who has told his 
secret. The moon that night looked weird and 
troubled, fighting its way through clouds, as if 
haggard and weary with continued effort. It 
would splash the pillars, the cob webbed walls of 
the great quadrangle with lashes of light which 
it withdrew as swiftly as it sent them, it baffled the 
sight, and made all things seem to rock and reel. 
In and out of the belts of brightness and of 
blackness Otto stumbled. He had lost the desire 
for motion, but could not stop. He had been 
scared with what he had imagined, and now he 
was scared at what he saw. For, truly or un- 



358 CHEQUER-WORK. 

truly, this great home of merchandise seemed 
©lice more alive. Sounds like the throwing down 
of heavy bales, a clash of chains, and bolts and 
bars withdrawn, voices of command and obe- 
dience, struck his ear as the wind whined through 
the crannies or thumped and rioted upon the 
roof. Creatures whose subsistence was inex- 
plicable glided from hole and corner, threw their 
little shadows in swift flight across the floor, 
then paused and peered at him. Spiders, like 
sailors who had received an order from the deck, 
swung down by their airy shrouds and stopped 
before his face. Mice squeaked and capered ; rats 
lolled and lumbered in and out of the shadows as 
if they were parts of them. 

Otto felt too uncomfortable to proceed. He 
paused just as one of the vermin approached him 
and crawled up his leg : with a thrill he shook it off 
with his hand, and found it was but a shadow flying 
past. Just then the moon had sailed into a great 
lake of brightness overhead ; the clouds were folded 
and gone ; with one long shriek the wind had 
fled ; the vermin which seemed to haunt the place 
withdrew ; and a tranquillity, a peace, yet with a 
terror hidden at its heart, enveloped all things. 
Through the silence there fell audibly from above 



THE LUCK OF VAN SPENDIUS. 359 

a sigh. No wind had caused it ; it had nothing 
of its tumult and appeal ; and yet it thrilled the 
breast of Otto as had not all the clamors of the 
night. He raised his head and looked. Against 
the full brightness of the huge skylight a dusky 
figure looked down upon him. Otto stood mag- 
netized by an eye which he could not see. He 
tried to fly, but his feet were glued to the floor. 
He tried to recover his courage, but his heart 
dissolved within him. Unable to move, unable 
to speak, he was yet acutely sensible to all move- 
ment and sound. His ear hungered in the silence 
for any noise which shouM relieve its burden. 
His eye craved any reality to dispossess the 
phantom which he feared. 

Timidly at last he raised his eyes to the sky- 
light. It was one unbroken circle of brightness ; 
the figure had disappeared. But before he had 
time to indulge in hope, a faint sound, like a 
tread of distant feet, held his senses captive. He 
tried not to listen, but he could not choose. 
Slowly at first, then faster, the sound of feet 
descended from above. He counted the steps by 
which it seemed to descend, the paces along the 
corridor which led to still another flight. On 
one side the building was buried in shadow, 



360 CHEQUER-WORK. 

while on the other, through the bright skylight, a 
great shaft of moonshine fell across the worn, 
knotted woodwork, the slippery hand-rail, and the 
white and fissured wall. In that light all things 
were defined as on a map. Otto gazed blindly 
into the side of shadow, but the footfalls came 
not thence. He was forced to turn his head 
towards the moonlight, which seemed, as they 
approached, like snow to mufile the footfalls, 
which continued to descend. Still they were dis- 
tinct ; and suddenly, as Otto looked towards the 
point whence they came, on the first landing aboye 
him he beheld, as if citeated by his fears, the im- 
posing figure of Gaspar van Spendius. 

Upon his head was a little cap ; upon his 
broad breast twists of golden chain. At his side 
was a rapier, — and the whole aspect was majes- 
tic beyond words. He was there, in the habit in 
which Eembrandt had painted him, and upon his 
face was the look of questioning reproof which 
the great artist, or the conscience of his descend- 
ant, had given to the face on the canvas. But 
now, as he gazed. Otto saw with affright how 
that look gathered and grew, till, like a thun- 
der-cloud, it blackened the whole countenance. 
Flashes like those of lightning came from the 






THE LUCK OF VAN SPENDIUS. 361 

eyes ; and a voice, intense with passion, ex- 
claimed : " Coward and fool ! who can neither 
win a fortune nor keep one ! Unworthy of the 
name thou bearest, 

" Thou hast damned the whaef ! " 



I had slept and suddenly awoke. I found 
myself sitting up in bed, and thought I saw a 
ball of golden threads roll into the square of sun- 
shine upon the floor. I had wakened from 
within outward, and so my dream, without a 
break, emptied itself before the notice of the 
intelligence. 

Dreams are wonderful and clever things, and 
it is a great pity that we should shatter them so 
often by unscientific waking. I have a notion 
that we shall learn to teach ourselves the trick 
of their unfolding, and thus enjoy them in their 
integrity. 

In this case, my dream came whole. As I sat 
up in bed, it was all like a picture before me. It 
seemed to me quite a genuine dream, which 
Fancy compounded by an art of its own ; — a 
skill which, borrowing hints from e very-day life, 



362 CHEQUER-WORK. 

could dilate them in such a way as to please the 
imagination and make a continuous story. 

Nor was it difficult for me to discover most of 
tlie ingredients of the magic cup which sleep 
had brewed for me. The dream was begotten 
through the following particulars. I had lately 
read, in Harper's Magazine, an analysis of Jef- 
ferson's Eip van Winkle : that picture of the 
loafer — irresponsible, kindly, pitiful, with only 
one enemy in the world — himself. The criti- 
cism gave me a loafer and a Dutchman, but my 
dream preferred the banks of the Meuse to those 
of the Hudson. 

Just then I had been collecting, as the silver 
discussion proceeded, and bi-metallism displayed 
its banners of white and yellow, all the various 
kinds of silver dollars that a broker could fur- 
nish. I showed them to many who found them 
interesting, and the feel of the real metal, after 
the degrading greasiness of paper, was a real 
comfort to one's hand. This created the house 
of Van Spendius, and the long line of colorless 
kegs. 

The incident of the desk corresponds with the 
dream. The brightness of the dollar there, ex- 
panding till it seemed huge as a moon, was per- 



THE LUCK OP VAN SPENDIUS. 363 

haps, in memory, the liveliest impression the 
dream left. The high-shouldered bottle, a genu- 
ine native of Holland, quaint and picturesque, 
still towers among shapes of a more vulgar sort, 
friendly to hospitality and good-fellowship. In 
these temperance days it ought to be ashamed of 
itself, but is not quite. It delights to believe that 
it may still warm hearts loyal to generous living, 
and sprinkle, as it did on the crullers of Rotter- 
dam, something of cheer and comfort in this 
weary world of ours. 

One of the most unsettled but interesting points 
relating to dreams is the extent of time they 
cover. I have a book by a Frenchman, who de- 
voted his days to the study of his nights, and 
wrote learnedly on dreams. He would make his 
servant, watch in hand, scratch a match, uncork 
an odorous phial, or tear a sheet of paper, and 
then instantly awake his master. Oftentimes, 
after wandering years in Asia, exposed to dangers, 
the victim of many adventures, after herding with 
elephants, and finally lifted into the air by the 
trunk of one of them, he would find himself 
awake, the elephant's trunk his servant's hand 
upon his arm, and his long years of Oriental 
residence resolved into a period of twenty see- 



364 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

onds. I remember once being awakened, when 
sleeping at a friend's house, by the sound of tree- 
boughs trailing on the roof. From the sleep 
within floated, suggested by the sound, these 
lines into the daylight : — 

" Clang closed tlie minster's brazen gates, 
"Witli echoes wildly solemn ; 
Arch unto arch, reverberates, 
And column unto coRimn." 

These lines, to the awakening sense, seemed to 
come printed at once upon the sound which 
caused them. 




XIV. 

SIGHT-SEEING. 



XIY. 
SIGHT-SEEING. 



"ly /TAN is at home in every country. While he 
is yet a stranger, he hourly feels his citizen- 
ship growing within him. The sky, the food, the 
landscape, which shape the natives of the place, he 
soon finds acting upon him to mould him after 
their pattern. His little patriotism du clocher 
melts into a larger humanity. He even contem- 
plates his home from the outside, and notices, 
with secret pain, defects which he once, perhaps, 
held to be excellencies. His body, his mind, 
tired with routine, accept gratefully fruits which 
have a savor he never knew before, and the 
thoughts which seem to spring out qi the earth 
and which his home had never suggested. 

He is learning all over. Every glance of his 
eye is better than books : it may tell him more as 
he looks upon a Greek headland, with its crum- 
bling architecture, of the people who once lived 



6b9 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

there than could Thucydides or Grote. He not 
merely sees the thing, and not the words that stood 
for it, but he is in its. atmosphere, and by subtle 
sympathy recreates in himself the vanished past. 

And the more he knows, the more he wants to 
know. It is not for the locomotion of the body 
that he travels, though that gets unexpected 
good, bathing itself in foreign skies and tasting 
a new nourishment. It is not for his body, but 
for the swift flight of that wistful, cuTious and 
'attentive spirit of his which moves to put itself 
close to the strange life which only so it can 
understand. 

This education of the traveller is one of the 
marked peculiarities of the time in which we live. 
All the world travels now. Dr. Johnson is re- 
ported to have said that a visit to the Wall of 
China, in his time, gave a man a celebrity which 
was to his children- an heirloom. This is now so 
changed that to gain such fame a man must have 
struggled with the torrid heat of central Africa, 
and its hourly dangers. Messrs. Speke, Living- 
stone, and Stanley are the only true lions of travel 
now. And who knows how soon railroads may 
not be sending a flock of cockneys through their 
deserts ! 



SIGHT-SEEING. 369 

It is noticeable that just at the time when the 
world is everywhere being explored, the power of 
wresting from it its last secret is attained through 
science. The baggage of thought which accom- 
panies the traveller is not the impedimenta of the 
old Roman, but the accumulated store of histori- 
cal and geographical fact which does not en- 
cumber but help him. This double advantage 
of facility of access to remote places, and the 
power of using one's wits in investigation, fur- 
nished by reading, have quickened and multiplied 
the tide of travel till it overflows every border. 
It is the especial pleasure of our time. A law- 
yer's vacation suffices to follow Tyndall's foot- 
steps amid the glaciers, and half a year, which so 
many can spare, gives one the circuit of the 
world and its remotest civilizations. Every one 
notices how the earth has shrunk in dimensions 
in these latter days. The Greeks had to fashion 
their philosophy from the experience of a few 
coasts and islands. But now every drawing- 
room has its Marco Polo who has feasted with 
the Great Khan and seen the downward-hanging 
heads of the Antipodes. There is no measure to 
express this additional gain of knowledge of our 
planet. Men are everywhere well informed, and 



370 CHEQUER-WORK. 

the old prejudices which fostered a dislike of 
those beyond their borders are forced to. melt in a 
universal acceptance. 

So common is this increased acquaintance with 
things, that no one boasts of it. Illustrations 
from Brazil or Siam get introduced in conversa- 
tion without notice. Hence the specialist, to 
hold an advance upon the educated crowd, 
must submit to narrow his investigation to one 
thing. And there are so many of these ex- 
amining minds everywhere at work that earth is 
honeycombed before their vision. Soon we shall 
all be pseudo-scientists. Not only are scientific 
journals found in most drawing-rooms, but the 
old belles-lettres magazine must have its corner 
for scientific facts. Everywhere Science is tinctur- 
ing literature, dissolving theories,, and driving the 
gods to their mountain heights. It naturally 
feels the insolence of its success, which time 
will moderate. It sweeps rubbish from its path, 
to plant there fresh blooms of truth and the 
audacious speculations which will be the com- 
monplaces of the future. And so the mistakes 
and errors everywhere driven before it complain of 
conflict between the new and old beliefs. It is 
no fault of the pioneer if many a hollow trunk 



SIGHT-SEEING. 371 

goes down before his axe. As the cruel grove of 
the Druid made way for a laughing harvest, so 
the crumbling pillars in many a temple have the 
sky and daylight let in upon them, and the world 
is better for the change. 

While half the world is shrinking from the con- 
flict between religion and science, science is 
calmly proclaiming to its new pupils that such 
conflict is impossible. All the gains of truth but 
strengthen every other. And inasmuch as the 
reverential feeling has no scales in which to 
weigh evidence, but merely bows humbly before 
the best belief it has attained to, so it can only 
look with larger vision from the outlook of these 
recent gains. There is disturbance of the old 
landmarks, but the province of thought is carried 
forward to new boundaries. 

One can see the receding visions of the past, 
one can hear the wail of departing faiths, as once 
before men have known the heartache which 
accompanied the great cry of Pan over departing 
Olympus from many a Grecian isle and headland. 
And as we still cherish dearly, as a part of the 
poetical store house of the world, the old my- 
thology, so none need fear that the lofty misappre- 
hensions of Judasa can ever become indifferent to 



372 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

man. They are a part of the history of the race, 
and cannot be spared. When man steps to new 
vantage grounds he does not leave a chasm 
behind him, but the loved highway of human 
thought ; and the things priceless to his fathers 
must still be dear to him. Philosophically, he 
will even love them better for encompassing them 
with his ,better knowledge ; and every breath of 
the Past will yet remain a bubble in the amber of 
memory which, if not, as once, a talisman, is yet 
the ornamental heir-loom of the race. 

Zeal is mostly in proportion to ignorance. The 
days of real conflict were when ignorance fought 
with ignorance. The torch which fired the mar- 
tyr's pile can never be held by a hand over which 
presides the philosophic calm of wisdom. Soon 
the last outcry against the use of reason — man's 
only lantern to the dark places of thought — will 
be hushed in a serenity which must submit to share 
in the enthusiasm of universal insight. Those 
who have a taste for polemical reading, who relish 
the sharp ring of blows upon the helmets of 
enemies, must hasten to enjoy it, for soon a 
reconciliation, whose hour daily is nearer, will 
have taken from them the joys of such a conflict. 
And then, indeed, where once auger met anger, 



SIGHT-SEEING. 373 

will be a smile, — not one of mutual incredulity, 
but that sweeter one that shares in the sunshine 
of a common belief. And this is why the state 
of mind gained by philosophic calm, which con- 
templates the past without prejudice, makes the 
toil of the traveller a new sensation. He does 
not go to throw stones at Rome or Egypt, but to 
reverently retrace the footsteps of the fathers. 
He knows they knew less than he, but their in- 
fancy of mind must always remain to him worthy 
of reverence, for it was the father of his present 
thought, and without their effort to attain to 
something like truth he could not be where 
he is. 

Travel has now made the world an open book. 
We can turn to a date and a page, and see what 
was the world's best and loftiest conception then. 
It all flows, this stream of history, winding and 
capricious, but between known and explored 
banks, and is drawn from what sources we some- 
what apprehend. As the river fringed with cities, 
and bearing the commerce of the world, may be 
known for many a league, yet from what cleft of 
Caucasus, what mountain tarn, its first lispings 
fell, may be yet hidden from us. The Nile to- 
day has its Sphinx, which withheld the secret 



374 CHEQUER-WOEK. 

of its source, devouring many a rash traveller 
who sought of it the dangerous question of 
its origin. And yet that enigma, that sphinx, 
is disappearing before the all-investigating eye. 
And as we shall know the fountain whence 
flows every river of earth, so, little by little, 
shall we track the historical stream of faith to 
its source, and know from what lofty instincts 
it was fed. 

It is also noticeable that what was once called 
the grand tour, whence returned the London 
dandy to astonish the court of Queen Anne, does 
not suffice. That is no longer the grand tour. 
It is now the circuit of the globe, and many brave 
feet have made the round. It is also felt that 
the Old is no longer old enough. Eome seems 
a barbaric modern pile, and it is indeed true that 
he who has tasted of the lioar sublimity of Egypt, 
or the sunny sweetness of Greece, finds what 
Eome has done vulgar as well as barbaric. 
Long since, the world had begun to provincialize. 
It did not create, but borrow ; and in matters of 
architecture such borrowing little avails. As 
the Greek and Egyptian temple grew out of the 
soil on which they stand, their forms, their archi- 
tectural orders, never look at home away from 



SIGHT-SEEING. 375 

their native site. They were a part of the 
landscape they adorned ; and were born of a 
marriage between man's longing and his envi- 
ronment. The light of their native sky alone 
can feed them, it alone can frame the shadows 
which make half their meaning. And so ancient 
Rome already began that patch-work of eclecti- 
cism which, receding farther and farther from 
its birthplace, fills the world with a beauty for 
ever alien and unaccliraated. Something every 
country has won from its life, of genuineness. In 
each country there is an architecture with a flavor 
of the soil. France's old chateau, England's Eliza- 
bethan mansion, ask no odds of Italy or Egypt. 
We feel that they grew, and though the flower 
may be lustreless and of homely shape, it has the 
beauty of sincerity and of belonging there. It 
is in such growths as these, the dwellings which 
man framed, from the dictates of climate, for his 
comfort and convenience, that we may find what 
shall be best for the future in our architecture. In 
Egypt and in Greece even private dwellings were 
unimportant. Men had not the money to make 
them costly, nor was it their desire to shelter 
themselves, through unwieldy splendor, from a 
climate where all out-doors was a home to them. 



376 chequer-work:. 

All the genius of the artist, all the longing of 
the nation, flowed into the expression of gran- 
deur and beauty as a fit home for the divinity. 
As man's idea of the Supreme Being is an 
ideal conception, so these temples became purely 
idealistic. The ceremonial, the sacrifice, the re- 
ligious procession, offered no hindrance to the 
expression of this. They were in simple accord- 
ance with it ; and to enjoy fairly the beauty of the 
Temple one should have seen it, with its ceremon- 
ial processions. 

In Egypt, where the earth is soft with the re- 
curring overflow, where the desert sand is shifting 
and unstable, man from the earliest time had 
known an architectural form inevitable under these 
conditions. The tent of the Bedouin has been 
ever there before his eyes. That relish of the 
thing we love must have given to its inclined 
lines for him a beauty which was as satisfying as 
was the broad base demanded by the nature of 
the soil. The Pyramids are the petrified tents 
of the dead. Every pylon loves to incline out- 
ward ; and to-day in the mud villages of the 
Nile, the same form is retained in the buildings 
of unburnt brick, which are thus the true children 
of the Past. 



SIGHT-SEEING. 377 

There must be something in the human mind 
which almost makes a columned temple the inevit- 
able form for a house of worship. Man's sense of 
variety, richness and mystery is not content with 
merely upright walls, either hypaethral or covered. 
It may be, as has been said, tliat the tree's trunk 
sustaining its roof of verdure made for him his col- 
umn. How could it be otherwise ? Its form is the 
most beautiful, and to make it square would only 
give him unrequited labor. At once that sense of 
decoration which even the savage has, must have 
made him painfully feel the crudeness of a mere 
shaft without expression at its terminations. 
The plinth below, the capital above, were fatally 
certain to be made, if only as the most modest 
suggestions of ornament. If there were not 
some sacred symbol to be wrought into the 
edifice, constraining its form or dictating its 
ornament, the things which men loved best, 
which had to them most of beauty or suggestion, 
which brought to them pleasant memories, or 
perfumed their lives, such things we might expect 
to find their models for decoration. And such in 
Egypt are the lotos, and the bud of the papyrus. 

An Egyptian temple was the place of cere- 
monious worship dedicated to one of the many 



378 CHEQUER-WORK. 

forms of Pantheistic life into which their idea of 
a deity was broken. It was a place of rever- 
ence for the king, his officers, and his priests. 
All there was then of highest intellectual thought 
expressed itself there. It was the consummate 
flower of a national life ; and it has been fortu- 
nate for them and for us that while it was a temple 
of worship it was also a national museum. Upon 
its walls are written the history of Egypt. The 
king celebrating his victory over his enemies, the 
majestic processions of decorated priests, with 
the names through their cartouches clearly made 
out, and of the long dynasty of kings, makes every 
stone alive. It is like a madrepore or brain-coral, 
with infinite details added to its infinite simplicity. 
There the past lives again. Where even in the 
immortality-giving air of Egypt outlines and col- 
ors have failed, these intaglie of kings and heroes 
breathe for ever. And while every thing is exe- 
cuted with unerring accuracy, with all the fulness 
of inventional realism there is always an air of 
mystery breathing from these walls. For their 
life was not as our life, and we cannot wholly 
understand what we see. 

If the traveller at Pompeii with delight finds 
himself made a contemporary of our Saviour's 



SIGHT-SEEING. 379 

era, with far greater clearness of statement, a 
more direct appeal to his intelligence than there 
do these sculptures make him a contemporary of 
the immemorial Past. While Greece gives us in 
its Parthenon the figures of gods and heroes, while 
the cathedrals of the Middle Ages offer us the 
Deity in conjectural symbolism, or man ascetic 
with vigil and penitence, the temples of Egypt 
present us with him at his best ; youthful, bloom- 
ing, with a smile of triumph upon his placid 
features, and a look of peace and serenity which is 
lost to us in later times. The feeling of Hesiod 
that once there was a golden age, when our 
race was happy with youth and simplicity of 
living, seems to find corroboration in these 
sculptures ; and the older they are, running back 
to what we might have feared would prove a period 
of savagery and incompleteness, the more beauti- 
ful is the form, the more sweet the smile upon the 
faces of these fathers of our race. In a certain 
sense, the sculptures at Abydos are a greater 
proof of the ancientness of man than any thing 
that Mr. Darwin has urged. And even this per- 
fection of art, six thousand years ago, removes, 
as he would desire, to an infinitely distant past, 
the slow emergence of man from that mysterious 



380 CHEQUER-WORK. 

origin from wliicli our imagination shrinks. And 
therefore these temples of Egypt, directly relat- 
ing to the Europe whence we come, have a 
nameless charm, compounded of all that can 
agitate us through mystery and remoteness, 
while yet the desire for knowledge is satisfied 
through their completeness. 

If the tribes who built them first came from 
Asia, if it be that they inhabited Africa, still 
they are to us Europeans, and intelligible to us. 
For the Asia they may have come from has always 
had a life remote from ours. Its architecture 
has a grotesqueness allied to caricature, its sim- 
plicity a childishness which at times seems semi- 
idiotic. Their bizarre and meaningless ornament 
is as far removed from the gravity and grace 
of Egyptian sculpture as is our loftiest ideal, 
our severest thinking, remote from the nursery 
fables and infantile babble of their creeds and 
legends. 

We dwell thus with fondness upon the archi- 
tecture of Egypt, for it is all that is left us to 
express man's longing and reverence from those 
grand old days when lived the prophets whose 
high thoughts are so interwoven into the Chris- 
tian life of Europe. For Judaea leaves us nearly 



SIGHT-SEEING. 381 

nothing. Manetho tells us how cruel and unspar- 
ing was the devastation and destruction of Egyp- 
tian temples ; how the priesthood was ill-trea,ted 
and driven forth in the long and terrible reign of 
the Hyksos, and in that later conquest of the 
Delta for thirteen years by the Jews. Certainly 
these iconoclasts had no sympathy with the archi- 
tectural and sculptural beauty they mangled, for 
the love of form is not a possession of the Semitic 
mind. Perhaps it is best that in the Holy Land 
we should not find ruins which might disappoint 
our reverence and faith. Enough that on every 
side are temples not made with hands, where 
breathes from austere, limestone mountain crests, 
or waving plains breaking in verdure over what 
once was the home of king and prophet, the 
nameless, formless essence of the Past. The 
soul can there deal directly with the Maker, 
without the intervention of human skill ; and a 
more awful and satisfying sense of the remote 
comes to us from these changeless hills and val- 
leys than could have reached us through muti- 
lated figures and a degraded architecture. But 
still the walls of Jerusalem have grandeur in 
their hoary and Titanic blocks, the sublime 
spaciousness still where once was set the holy 



882 CHEQUER-WOEK, 

Temple, and where, the Mahometan survivor of 
the glorj of David, like a jewel Earth cannot 
allow to perish, rises from its floor the unimag- 
inable Rock of Ages, which affects us as could 
nothing wrought by man. Still the sweet sun- 
shine hovers in the misty olives round Nazar- 
eth, making us forget its filthy streets and 
impossible relics, and over that sea where only 
has the form of Man been seen to move — 
all these contribute something which the heart 
takes to itself as it never could any human 
work. 

To our imagination there is a barrier beyond 
that Syrian sunshine, that Egyptian splendor, 
which we do not care to pass. Thither the long 
train of reverential pilgrims moves, till, satiated 
and content, they ask nothing of earth besides. 
They come to breathe the air which nourished the 
fathers of the race, to see the places where they 
devoutly and humbly hope their Deity is nearer 
to his creatures than elsewhere. Its sunshine 
and its sky they feel to be their own ; and how- 
ever pellucid may be heaven's , breath, and 
however limpid and glittering maybe the sun- 
shine upon the Ganges, for them it is an alien 



SIGHT-SEEING. 383 

land. The pull of the heart-strings carries them 
not so far.' The metaphysical quest of the trav- 
elling philosopher may lose itself in the labyrinth 
of Brahma and Yishnu, but to him whose mother 
has placed the sweet solitudes of Judaea beside his 
cradle, the farther East calls with but a cold invita- 
tion. And when in the belated spring morning the 
returned traveller sees through the driving snow 
of April some Gateway to the Dead, inclining as 
does the Pylon he remembers, or the silver curves 
of the snow add their white to the forest pillar, 
which mocks the lines with which Greece has 
dowered us, with longing heart he looks past 
the blinding storm to where these shivering 
mockeries find under the stainless azure their 
immortal anti-types, and where they are, he feels 
to be his country, almost more than the one which 
claims him. 

For the Age of Faith in many things is past 
for man's intelligence. He dare not, as did the 
fathers, elevate the beautiful things of his own 
land against the sky in sacred symbols, he dare not, 
he cannot, feel the Nature round him flow from 
his heart into new forms which are immortal, be- 
cause his heart and Nature's are not at one. But 
he lives, the venerable pensioner of a past that 



384 CHEQUER-WOKK. 

has dowered him with an architecture which in 
alienation and ungennineness seems to plead 
hourly for that forgiveness which the necessity of 
the time only makes possible. He must imitate 
the colonnade and friezes of the Parthenon, with 
no priestly procession to pass through it; he must 
mock the Pylon which led the long resounding 
chant through its lofty door, by giving it an 
office for which it was never meant, as at Mount 
Auburn, and bid, instead, the long train of sabled 
mourners pass below it. 

In the impatience at this anachronism of old 
forms, their unsuitableness and desecration, may 
we hope that at some future day, nourished by 
the nature around it, may spring from American 
genius forms of grandeur and beauty all our own, 
unborrowed of Greece or Egypt, binding hillside 
and city in tender sympathy and fellowship with 
the sky above them, till we shall have an architec- 
tural America of the Future. South America, 
in its tangled jungles, hides an architecture of its 
own, so kindred to that of Asia that the conquis- 
tadores beholding it might have cried : " Behold 
the India we seek ! " And shall our haughty 
native land, with all its wealth and intelligence, 
look with envy upon the dead artists of Yucatan, 



SIGHT-SEEING. 385 

nor live to see our own soil budding in shapes of 
native beauty to which Europe may come, as it 
cannot yet, with sentiments of admiration and 
reverence ? 



TTniverslty Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 






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